Univers

ity of

Cap

e Tow

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The Politics of Memorialisation in Namibia:

Reading the Independence Memorial Museum

Alexandra Stonehouse

STNALE007

A minor dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the

degree of Master of Philosophy in Justice and Transformation

Faculty of the Humanities

University of Cape Town

2018

COMPULSORY DECLARATION

This work has not been previously submitted in whole, or in part, for the award of any degree. It is my

own work. Each significant contribution to, and quotation in, this dissertation from the work, or works,

of other people has been attributed, and has been cited and referenced.

Signature: Date: 18 February 2018

Univers

ity of

Cap

e Tow

n

The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgement of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non-commercial research purposes only.

Published by the University of Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author.

Abstract

The Independence Memorial Museum is the latest addition to the post-independence memorial

landscape by Namibia’s ruling party, South West African People’s Organisation (or the Swapo

Party). Like many other southern African liberation movements turned ruling political parties,

Swapo has looked towards history to find legitimation and support in the present. This is

referred to in this research as the creation of a Swapo master narrative of liberation history. It

is a selective and subjective re-telling of history which ultimately works to conflate Swapo

with the Nation. As such, Swapo has been portrayed as the sole representative and liberator of

the Namibian people, and anything which effectively contradicts this has been silenced or

purposefully forgotten within official or public history. This study takes as its starting point the

removal of the colonial era Rider Statue in 2009, to make way for the new museum. The site,

a significant landmark with regards to the Herero and Nama genocide, had remained effectively

untouched both pre and post-independence as the city built up around several German colonial

monuments. In order to understand why such a change in the memorial landscape would occur,

and in a turnaround from the National Policy of Reconciliation that opted to protect all

historical monuments as heritage after independence, this study looks to the Swapo master

narrative of liberation history to explain the motivations behind building an Independence

Memorial Museum. As such, the museum was thematically analysed with reference to the

master narrative, and it was found that the same inclusions and exclusions, emphases, and

silences were continued and consolidated within the museum. This study considers what

narrative is put forward by the museum and why, and contemplates what opportunities were

lost. The continued silences within Namibian official history constitute a sustained injustice to

the people of Namibia.

Contents Page

Acknowledgements Page 1

List of Figures Page 2

Introduction Page 3

Key historical events Page 7

Methodology Page 16

Reading the Independence Memorial Museum Page 18

Critical Perspectives on Memory and Memorialisation Page 21

Memorialisation and Memory Page 24

Key Case Studies in Memorialisation Page 27

Constructing the Swapo Master Narrative of Liberation History Page 35

Legitimising the Liberator Page 37

Narratives of Early Resistance Page 39

Reconciliation, Amnesty and Amnesia Page 42

Through the Barrel of the Gun: Militarism and Masculinity Page 49

Memorialisation in Namibia Page 52

The Independence Memorial Museum Page 56

Memorial Politics of the Reiter Page 56

The New Statues Page 62

Early Resistance and the Genocide Page 65

Liberation Through the Barrel of the Gun Page 70

Women in the Independence Memorial Museum Page 78

Expunging the Record Page 83

Conclusion Page 86

Reference List Page 91

1

Acknowledgements

I wish first and foremost to thank my supervisor and friend Helen Scanlon. Without your

guidance, encouragement and constant feedback this thesis could not have been written.

Thank you for the opportunities you have made possible. Thank you for the knowledge you

have imparted.

To mom and dad, I owe everything to your unwavering support and belief in me. To my

sister Georgia, thank you for your constant companionship during the process of writing. You

were always there to read a paragraph I wasn’t sure about or brainstorm a word I had

forgotten. I hope I can do the same for you one day.

Heartfelt thanks go out to Henning Melber for taking the time to meet with me and discuss

beautiful Namibia. Your encouragement of my pursuit of this topic relieved the pressure of

my chronic self-doubts.

Lastly, to Esther Muinjangue. Your insights have been invaluable to this study. Thank you

for patiently discussing with me a painful history. We will keep fighting for justice.

This thesis is dedicated to those whose stories and histories have gone unacknowledged for

far too long.

2

List of Figures

Figure 1: The Alte Feste Plaque Page 58

Figure 2: The Genocide Memorial Statue Page 62

Figure 3: The Sam Nujoma Statue Page 64

Figure 4: Early Resistance Leaders and Sam Nujoma Page 65

Figure 5: Photograph of Orumbo rua Katjombondi Page 67

Figure 6: The Chamber of Horrors Page 68

Figure 7: Shackles and brass reliefs in the Chamber of Horrors Page 69

Figure 8: The Attack on Omugulugwombashe Page 72

Figure 9: Military tanker in the Liberation War gallery Page 74

Figure 10: The bomb statue, reads “Kassinga!! Accuse” Page 76

Figure 11: The Cassinga Massacre 4th May, 1978 Page 77

Figure 12: A close up of the Cassinga Massacre mural Page 77

Figure 13: A statue portrays a woman cradling a man in chains Page 80

Figure 14: Male Namibian Political Prisoners on Robben Island Page 81

Figure 15: Long Live Namibian Independence! Page 84

*All the images included were taken by the author.

3

Introduction

Amidst public controversy over the removal of the German colonial era Rider Statue (Reiterdenkmal)

in 2009, construction began on the Independence Memorial Museum in the capital city of Windhoek,

Namibia. The Rider Statue had stood atop a hill in central Windhoek for almost a century, placed there

when Namibia was German South West Africa under colonial rule. The parliamentary order to remove

the statue ignited public debate about the ‘rewriting of history’ and destruction of heritage as those who

opposed the removal claimed, and those who saw this as an opportunity to put an end to the positive

commemoration of the violence perpetrated by German colonial rule. This would pre-empt by several

years the memorial politics that gripped South Africa during the student movement Rhodes Must Fall

at the University of Cape Town in 2015, with echoes of the same debates playing out across various

media platforms. Students protested at the university with demands for the removal of the statue of the

imperial colonial figure Cecil John Rhodes on campus, a symbolic move towards the wider call for

decolonisation of the university. In 2017, across the United States of America, similar protests and

conversations occurred concerning confederate era statues and memorials. Statues, it would seem, can

spark virulent debates about the meaning of monuments from the past in the present. Namibia’s own

colonial era statue, the Reiterdenkmal, commemorated the German lives lost in the Namibian German

war of 1904-8. The events of this war are now designated the first genocide of the 20th century, where

the German colonial army (Schutztruppe) brought about the demise of thousands of members of the

Herero, Nama and other minority ethnic groups. In 2009 the Reiterdenkmal was removed by an order

of parliament, to make way for the impending Independence Memorial Museum. Five years later, on

the 21st of March 2014, the Independence Memorial Museum was inaugurated by President

Hifikepunye Pohamba in celebration of Namibian Independence Day. The museum was designed and

constructed by the North Korean firm Mansudae Overseas Project, who also constructed and completed

Heroes’ Acre in 2002 and the State House of Namibia in 2008. The Independence Memorial Museum

represents the latest stage of how Namibian liberation history in the struggle for independence has been

officially written and sanctioned by the state.

4

The Independence Memorial Museum is an imposing structure that stands high on what has been

described as the ‘crown’ of the city of Windhoek, visible from most vantage points in and around the

capital. Alongside it were unveiled two new monuments, a statue of Namibia’s officially designated

founding father and first president Sam Nujoma, and the ‘Genocide Memorial Statue’ for the Herero

and Nama Genocide of 1904-8. Together, these three acts of memorialisation mark the latest official

addition to the memorial landscape (or memoryscape) by Namibia’s ruling political party, South West

African People’s Organisation (Swapo).1 This renewal of the memoryscape marks a decisive break with

the surrounding colonial era monuments. The five-story black glass and gold-plated modern structure

physically overshadows the colonial architecture of the Alte Feste Fort (German Schutztruppe fort built

in 1890) and the Christuskirche (Church of Peace, 1910), and replaced the Rider Statue (1912) entirely.

German Namibian sociologist Reinhart Kössler notes that until 2009 “the colonial composition of what

may be called the city crown had been left virtually untouched”.2 As such, the new constructions pose

a countering to the monolithic colonial memoryscape that was left in place for over one hundred years,

one which presents a version of history which explicitly celebrated colonialism and colonial violence.

Sabine Marschall, a Professor of Cultural and Heritage Tourism at the University of KwaZulu-Natal,

explains that unlike “many other African countries, which largely dismantled the insignia of the old

order after attaining independence from colonialism, the new Namibian government decided against a

radical, iconoclast policy. This was done in the spirit of reconciliation, but also – very importantly – to

avoid alienating the economically important white sector of the population”.3 This begs the question of

why, in 2009, nineteen years after independence, a monumental shift in the capital’s memory landscape

would occur with the removal of the Rider Statue. One theory, and one that fits with the forthcoming

analysis of the Independence Memorial Museum, is that amidst growing criticism and disillusionment

with the Swapo Party, the new memoryscape can be read as an investment in reminding the nation that

it was Swapo who liberated them.

1 Capital letters (SWAPO) indicate the party in its state as a liberation movement, as opposed to the post-

independence Swapo Party. 2 Reinhart Kössler, 2015, “Namibia’s Century of Colonialism – a Fragmented Past in an Unequal Society”, in

Namibia and Germany: Negotiating the Past (Windhoek, Namibia: University of Namibia Press): 29. 3 Sabine Marschall, 2009, “Culture Heritage Conversation and Policy”, in Landscape of Memory (Brill): 31

5

Therefore, while countering the singular colonial version of history that had monopolised the memorial

landscape of the city’s crown, the renewed memorial site presents its own particular interpretation of

history, as any monument or museum must necessarily do. To remember and remind is a core function

of memorialisation. To remember the victims, the perpetrators, those in-between, the places, the

victories and losses. However, we can also acknowledge the socially constructed nature of

conceptualising and recalling the past. History, memory and truth are not neutral or objective in nature.

Instead, they are produced and reproduced through thoughts, actions, discourses, politics and power, in

both the public and private realm. Jeffery Olick and Joyce Robbins write that history “is written by

people in the present for particular purposes, and the selection and interpretation of ‘sources’ are always

arbitrary. If ‘experience’, moreover, is always embedded in and occurs through narrative frames, then

there is no primal, unmediated experience that can be recovered”.4 This means that memory and history

are not just forms of recalled reality, but are inevitably distorted by perception both past and present,

on a personal, collective or national level. For example, autobiographical memories of individuals

always have a unique perspective to them – hundreds of witnesses can remember differing (and

sometimes conflicting) details of the exact same event. Memory, recollections and commemorations of

the past are thus always occurring within the realm of the subjective.

The very nature of our relationship to the past is such that it must be “produced in the present and is

thus malleable”.5 The production of the past in the present can be a “manipulation of the past for

particular purposes”, or the “inevitable consequence of the fact that we interpret the world – including

the past – on the basis of our own experience and within cultural frameworks”, both of which lead to

selectivity and subjectivity.6 Elke Zuern, who has written extensively on Namibian memorial politics,

argues that memorials offer “stylized presentations of the past, highlighting and glorifying certain actors

and actions while purposefully forgetting others”, sanitising and ‘re-remembering’ sometimes contested

4 Jeffery K Olick and Joyce Robbins, 1998, “Social Memory Studies: From “Collective Memory” to the

Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices”, Annual Review of Sociology 24: 110. 5 Olick and Robbins, 1998, “Social Memory Studies: From “Collective Memory” to the Historical Sociology of

Mnemonic Practices”: 128. 6 Ibid.

6

histories.7 To remember is not then the simple recollection of a default or objective reality, and to

memorialise is unavoidably subjective and selective. In a paradoxical way, to remember necessitates

forgetting. Thereby, in the act of memory, in order to remember one thing, others must be at least

temporarily be forgotten. In the case of memorialisation, where memory is inscribed into the physical

world, there are practical limits to remembering. How can one properly and fairly commemorate every

victim of the Nazi regime in one memorial, when different groups were targeted and treated in different

ways and for different reasons? Memorials and those who implement them make choices about who

and what to memorialise, and while this can be more expansive in a museum compared to a traditional

memorial like a monument or statue, it will nevertheless remain subjective and selective.

This study thus aims to show how the particular version of history presented in the Independence

Memorial Museum is subjective and selective specifically in the way in which it is deliberately and

explicitly Swapo orientated. My research interest in the Independence Memorial Museum began with a

visit in July 2016, where I was struck by the one-sided nature of the museum and its location at one of

the historical centres of the Nama and Herero genocide. The Independence Memorial Museum, the new

statues and the surrounding older colonial monuments are all situated on the site of Orumbo rua

Katjombondi. Translated to ‘place of horror’ from the Herero language, this was one of several German

concentration camps where thousands Herero and Nama people were wilfully murdered and left to

perish in dire conditions during the genocide from 1904 to 1908. While the ‘Genocide Memorial Statue’

counts towards the commemoration of this particular space, it is difficult to imagine a museum

dedicated to Polish independence situated on the site of Auschwitz. Attempting to understand why such

a thing could occur in Namibia involves understanding a longer history of how official memorialisation

has taken place in Namibia, and how Namibian history itself has been written, shaped and used by those

in power. A condensed version of key historical events will follow, in order to allow for the important

contextual understanding of Namibia in the 21st century and later analysis of the history presented at

the Independence Memorial Museum.

7 Elke Zuern, 2012, “Memorial Politics: challenging the dominant party’s narrative in Namibia”, Journal of

Modern African Studies 50(3): 495.

7

Key historical events

Namibia is a large country in southern Africa with a population approximately 2.4 million people. Like

other countries in the region, its history is inextricably tied with that of violent settler colonialism. The

following section will outline a brief history of Namibia under German colonialism and South African

occupation, necessary for later critique of the Independence Memorial Museum. Without falling into

the ongoing colonial-ideological trap that African history begins with colonialism, because struggle

history only concerns the fight for self-determination, events before the period of German colonialism

will not be expanded upon here.8

Thus we look to 1884, when the area of Namibia’s south-western coast was declared German South

West Africa by German chancellor Otto von Bismarck, amidst the ‘scramble for Africa’ taking place in

the western world. It did not take long for this protectorate territory to expand through the use of

‘protection treaties’, which in the words of political analyst Henning Melber were “designed to prevent

the re-establishment of any African hegemonic structure in the southern and central parts of the

territory”.9 This prompted armed resistance from local Herero and Nama populations, who had

previously lived well on the land with cattle and agriculture. Under these worsening conditions, the

Herero people were the first to collectively take up arms. Melber notes that the war of “1904 to 1907

was, under the existing social conditions, a simple act of self-defence and a desperate effort to regain

autonomy”.10 In October of 1904, the war escalated into a full-scale genocide with General Lothar von

Trotha’s infamous extermination order which read (in part): “Within the German borders every Herero,

with or without a gun, with or without cattle, will be shot. I will no longer accept women and children,

I will drive them back to their people or I will let them be shot at”.11 The first stage of the genocide saw

Herero people forced to flee into the Namib Desert, where wells were poisoned by German soldiers and

8 For a discussion of this postcolonial criticism of African historiography, see Mahmood Mamdani, 2001,

“Beyond Settler and Native as Political Identities: Overcoming the Political Legacy of Colonialism”,

Comparative Studies in Society and History 43(4). 9 Henning Melber, 2010, “Economic and Social Transformation in the Process of Colonisation: Society and

State Before and During German Rule”, in State, Society and Democracy: A Reader in Namibian Politics, ed.

Chistiaan Keulder (Windhoek: Macmillan Education Namibia): 28, 29. 10 Melber, 2010, “Economic and Social Transformation in the Process of Colonisation”: 34. 11 Taken from Jan-Bart Gewald, 1994, “The Great General of the Kaiser”, Botswana Notes and Records 26: 68.

8

men, women and children were left to die from dehydration and starvation. The second stage was the

implementation of concentration camps, where thousands were worked, starved and beaten to death, or

succumbed to disease in the dire living conditions. The extermination order was soon applied to the

Nama in 1905. Sexual violence against Herero and Nama women was utilized as a tool of war, and the

resulting pregnancies have left a significant proportion of the affected communities today without

knowledge of the ‘German side’ of their family tree, constituting an ongoing spiritual harm felt by those

in the Herero culture.12

Only many decades later, however, would this come to be recognized as a genocide, and the first one

of the 20th century. The United Nations (UN) Genocide Convention defines genocide as “acts committed

with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”, including

killing, “causing serious bodily or mental harm”, deliberate “inflicting on the group conditions of life

calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”.13 The explicit nature of von

Trotha’s order evidences the intention to destroy the Herero people (and later the Nama) – not only to

destroy them physically but also their entire way of life. In 1985, the UN Whitaker Report, a new report

on genocide prompted by an investigation of the Armenian Genocide, conferred recognition of the acts

and intentions of the German colonial army to exterminate the Herero and Nama peoples in Namibia as

a genocide. Despite this, there are still ‘revisionist’ attempts to dismiss the genocide as an ordinary

colonial war and among the German Namibian community a reluctance to acknowledge or engage with

the reality of the genocide. David Olusoga and Casper Erichsen point to the condemnation by some

members of the German Namibian community of the use of the term ‘concentration camp’ or

Konzentrationslager – their response is to show that the term was in fact used by the Schutztruppe at

the time.14 David Olusoga and Casper Erichsen’s The Kaiser’s Holocaust is an attempt to reclaim a

history of the genocide that had been forgotten, and explicitly show how Germany’s actions in Namibia

paved the way for the genocidal policies of Nazism. There were five concentration camps in existence

12 Esther Muinjangue, 2018, personal communication with author, February 7. 13 “Genocide”, United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, accessed

January 10, 2018, http://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.html. 14 David Olusoga and Casper Erichsen, 2011, The Kaiser’s Holocaust (London: Faber and Faber): 351.

9

at the time of the genocide, the largest had a capacity for seven thousand and was situated in Windhoek

on the very land on which the Independence Memorial Museum now sits.15

The Ovambo people, largely unhampered by German authorities in their Northern territory, participated

only marginally in the war and were not targeted by the genocide orders. This is important to note for

the post-independence narrative of struggle history, where the acts of resistance by Nama and Herero

communities are overshadowed by that of the predominantly Ovambo populated SWAPO movement.

The San and Damara people, while not named in extermination orders, were also affected by the

genocidal policies of 1904-08. By the end of 1908, it is estimated that “less than half of approximately

20 000 members of the Nama communities survived the battles, or the imprisonment and forced labour

that followed their destruction”.16 For the Herero, it is estimated that 80 percent of the population were

murdered, including women, children and non-combatants.17 The effects of the loss of land, cattle and

wealth are still felt by these communities today.18 Only in 1908 were the concentration camps

disbanded, although hostilities did not cease.19 Of those who survived the concentration camps, “almost

all were forced into the status of slave labourers in the service of the colonial economy”.20

With the enormous death toll within the Police Zone (the central and southern areas under direct German

control), a shortage of labour ensued and therefore a system of migrant labour was introduced, forcing

many Ovambo men from the Northern region to leave their homes and land.21 This destroyed many

ways of life for the Ovambo people, both for those migrants who were exploited and forced to leave

and for those left behind. In less than two decades, German forces had murdered and pillaged the people

it had violently colonised, irrevocably damaging indigenous ways of life, economy and culture. The

effects of the genocide on the Herero and Nama communities continue to be realised today.

15 Olusoga and Erichsen, 2011, The Kaiser’s Holocaust: 162. 16 Melber, 2010, “Economic and Social Transformation in the Process of Colonisation”: 36. 17 Jeremy Sarkin, 2009, Colonial Genocide and Reparations Claims in the 21st Century: the socio-legal context

of claims under international law by the Herero against Germany for genocide in Namibia, 1904-1908 (United

States of America: Greenwood Publishing Group): 5. 18 Olusoga and Erichsen, 2011, The Kaiser’s Holocaust: 355. 19 Sarkin, 2009, Colonial Genocide and Reparations Claims in the 21st Century: 19. 20 Melber, 2010, “Economic and Social Transformation in the Process of Colonisation”: 37. 21 Ibid: 39.

10

After Germany’s defeat in World War I, the Treaty of Versailles (1919) transferred the territory of

German South West Africa to the Principal Allied and Associated Power, who in turn gave mandatory

power to the Union of South Africa in 1919, under the supervisory power of the League of Nations.

South Africa quickly went about creating an apartheid state in South West Africa (as it was renamed).

The policy of creating “Native” reserves, begun under German colonial rule, was integral to this

mission. The reserves became a supply chain for cheap labour, with economic dependency on the settler

capitalist economy ensured via the inability to live off the meagre land in the reserves. In Urban areas,

much like in South Africa, black people were forced to live on the periphery in ‘locations’. White

hegemony was cemented via “differentiation in the wage structure and the exclusion of the majority of

the population from decision-making”.22 Resistance to South African rule began as early as the 1920s,

with various political movements that while institutionally weak, laid the foundations and began a long

history of protest. The Bondelswartz Rebellion of 1922 and the Rehoboth Revolt of 1925 were to

establish “a pattern, that of petitions by the communities concerned to the League of Nations and to its

successor, the UN” that would continue into the SWAPO era.23 Labour action in the mining and fishing

industries “kept the embers of resistance burning” from 1922 to 1953.24

The question of the mandatory’s power over the mandate was never properly legally defined, and this

ambiguity “was manifestly exploited by successive South African governments, who refused to

recognise that sovereignty vested in the inhabitants” of the mandated territory.25 Thus began the

international legal disputes around South African control of South West Africa. As early as 1945, when

South Africa Prime Minister Jan Smuts petitioned to have the territory of South West Africa

incorporated into the Union of South Africa, the UN refused Smuts and demanded that South West

Africa be bought under the UN Trusteeship Committee as all other mandates had been. South Africa’s

defiance of the UN and the legal dispute over the mandate would continue up until negotiations for

national independence in the late 1980s.

22 André du Pisani, 2010, “State and Society under South African Rule”, in State, Society and Democracy: A

Reader in Namibian Politics, ed. Christiaan Keulder (Windhoek: Macmillan Education): 58. 23 du Pisani, 2010, “State and Society under South African Rule”: 60. 24 Ibid: 62. 25 Ibid: 61.

11

The early 1960s saw the formal formations of many black political parties and organisations. The

formation of the Ovamboland People’s Congress (OPC) in 1958 by Namibian workers in Cape Town

was an important development in the politics of resistance. As a labour movement the OPC sought to

improve the working and living conditions of migrant workers, but also “anticipated being part of a

broad congress movement in Namibia”.26 In 1959, the Ovamboland People’s Organisation (OPO) was

formed in Windhoek, with Sam Nujoma as the elected President. Like the OPC, the OPO “primarily

concerned itself with the position and welfare of contract workers from the North, [but] it included in

its programme the attainment of national independence”.27 Thus in 1960, when it “reconstituted itself

as SWAPO – the South West African People’s Organisation – it was able to broaden its membership

and appeal”.28 It is important to note that SWAPO evolved from the OPO, and was not born out of thin

air (as the historical narrative presented in the Independence Memorial Museum suggests) as an all-

inclusive liberation movement. 1959 also saw the formation of the South West African National Union

(SWANU), a year before SWAPO, whose membership was mainly constituted of Herero people and

was closely linked politically to the OPO and the Herero Chief’s Council. SWANU was to organise the

mass protest of the removal of residents from the Old Location to Katutura in Windhoek in December

1959, where 11 protesters were killed by South African police forces.

For SWAPO and SWANU, similar “political objectives and symbolic appeal culminated in personal

and organisational rivalry, which was deepened when the Liberation Committee of the Organization of

African Unity (OAU) – in 1962 – accorded recognition to SWAPO as a more ‘authentic’ movement,

when the latter mounted the armed struggle”.29 The 1960s would see many other politic parties form,

“most of them with either explicit or implicit ethnic or community preferences”.30 However, political

organisations were not the only forms of resistance taking place; among civil society, “religious

societies, Churches, educational and cultural associations, students and organised labour” were

contributing to the cause of the struggle.31 For the purposes of this study, it is important to take note of

26 Condensed from du Pisani, 2010, “State and Society under South African Rule”: 62. 27 du Pisani, 2010, “State and Society under South African Rule”: 63. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid: 64. 31 Ibid.

12

the existence of multiple and diverse political organisations being formed in this period, and the

contributions of other areas of society. From the 1960s, SWAPO leadership began going into exile all

over the world, and many Namibians followed to live in camps as refugees or as to train as guerrilla

soldiers in preparation for the armed struggle. Within these camps, over three decades and located at

various times in Tanzania, Angola and Zambia, “SWAPO was responsible for the welfare of roughly

60,000 Namibians”.32 As will be addressed in chapter 3, it was in exile that SWAPO committed gross

human rights violations against cadres accused of working with South African forces, in what has come

to be known as the ‘spy drama’.

Lastly, before the era André du Pisani refers to as ‘Controlled Change’, 1971-1989, the implementation

of the Odendaal Commission’s Report of 1964 marked a serious development in the politics of domestic

resistance and international outcry. The report sought to create ten “homelands” for black ethnic groups,

seeking “‘self-determination without ‘group domination’”.33 The UN and the General Assembly

condemned and protested the Odendaal Commission’s Report. SWAPO and SWANU rejected the

proposed “policy of ethnic fragmentation as a continuation of colonialism”, and for the former it

justified the perusal and intensification of the armed struggle.34 In October 1966, the UN General

Assembly revoked the mandate declaring the UN responsible for the territory of South West Africa, yet

South African administration and occupation continued. However, with the Advisory Opinion of 1971,

where the International Court of Justice confirmed the revocation of the mandate, the ball was set in

motion, providing the “backdrop to the ‘politics of controlled change’, in terms of which South Africa

– agonisingly slowly – came to the realisation that Namibia would become an independent state

sometime in the future”.35

32 Christian Williams, 2009, “Exile History: An Ethnography of the SWAPO Camps and the Namibian Nation”

(PhD diss., University of Michigan): vii. 33 du Pisani, 2010, “State and Society under South African Rule”: 66. 34 Ibid: 67. 35 Ibid: 68.

13

Under the auspices of the UN, there was a process described by Henning Melber as “controlled change”,

which “finally resulted in changed control”.36 While the SWAPO armed struggle, begun in the mid-

1960s, was a crucial factor in the progression towards independence, Henning Melber asserts that

“Namibian independence was [just] as much the result of a negotiated settlement”.37 When SWANU

elected not to wage an armed struggle, Christopher Saunders surmised that they could “never have

posed any effective challenge” to SWAPO.38 Nevertheless, SWAPO campaigned to be recognised as

the “sole and authentic representative of the Namibian people” and succeeded in 1976 when the United

Nations General Assembly conferred the recognition in Resolution 31/146.39 In conversation with an

anonymous informant, it was said that at the time this was celebrated personally as a great victory for

the struggle, but in retrospect set the tone for the authoritarian nature Swapo would develop post-

independence. In the negotiations, the resolution would “come to suggest that SWAPO did not believe

in the multiparty democracy it claimed it wanted to see installed in Namibia… the doctrine can be

blamed for buttressing the authoritarian tendencies seen in the ruling party since independence”.40

In 1978, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 435, calling for a ceasefire and UN supervised

democratic elections. The United Nations Transitional Assistance Group (UNTAG) was created and

worked in Namibia from April 1989 to March 1990, to oversee the peace process and free elections.

South Africa reluctantly accepted the UN’s interventions, but not without skirmishes. In 1989, on the

official implementation date of Resolution 435, more 300 SWAPO combatants were killed by South

African forces at Ondeshifiilwa.41 Nevertheless, the peace process continued under UNTAG, and the

first parliamentary elections were held in November 1989. Henning Melber argues that after SWAPO

reconstituted itself as a political party, the election participants “were not operating from a basis of

equal opportunity”; South African allies had much support, while SWAPO “had the privilege of being

36 Henning Melber, 2003, “Limits to Liberation: An Introduction to Namibia’s Postcolonial Political Culture”, in

Re-examining Liberation in Namibia: Political Culture Since Independence, ed. Henning Melber (Sweden:

Nordiska Afrikainstitutet): 13. 37 Melber, 2003, “Limits to Liberation”: 14. 38 Christopher Saunders, 2003, “Liberation and Democracy: A Critical Reading of Sam Nujoma’s

‘Autobiography’”, in Re-examining Liberation in Namibia: Political Culture Since Independence, ed. Henning

Melber (Sweden: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet): 94. 39 Saunders, 2003, “Liberation and Democracy”: 94. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid: 93.

14

the only recognised representative of the Namibian people”.42 It would seem that the non-aligned parties

never stood a chance in this regard.

Swapo gained 57 percent of the votes in the first election for the constituent assembly; the majority of

these votes came from the north while in the south “two-thirds of the vote went to parties other than

SWAPO”.43 Swapo’s biggest opposition, the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (DTA), a coalition of

twelve smaller parties, received the majority of their votes from the Herero and Nama communities,

and whites who disagreed with apartheid policy. Another factor in non-Swapo votes was the “detainee

issue”; people “feared it would not be able to abandon its heavy-handed and intolerant behaviour of the

past, particularly the torture and killing of SWAPO members suspected of being South African spies in

external SWAPO camps”.44 Not receiving the two-thirds majority needed to adopt the constitutional

document, the parties were forced to compromise and negotiate. The adoption of this liberal and

democratic constitution brought the Republic of Namibia to formal independence on the 21st of March

1990. Nevertheless, as a result of the negotiated settlement, “the structural legacy of settler colonialism

remained alive”; the transformation of land and property rights were never on the table.45

Post-independence there has been a growing critical evaluation of Swapo’s questionable commitment

to democratic and human rights values. Political analysts such as Henning Melber see the proliferation

of an autocratic and violent political culture during the liberation struggle, continued unchecked into

independence as a ‘democratic authoritarianism’ with little tolerance for opposition or dissent; the

‘limits to liberation’ as Melber calls it. As time has marched on, Swapo elite and leadership with struggle

credentials have personally prospered while the country suffers one of the highest GINI coefficients in

the world (a marker of income inequality), high unemployment rates and struggling healthcare and

education systems. It is in this climate that one questions the urge to open an Independence Memorial

Museum in 2014. While unable to provide a verifiable answer to this question from the source, it is my

contention that it is only in placing the new museum in the discourse of Swapo political culture pre and

42 Melber, 2003 “Limits to Liberation”: 15. 43 Linda Freeman, 1991, “The Contradictions of Independence: Namibia in Transition”, International Journal

46(4): 692. 44 Freeman, 1991, “The Contradictions of Independence”: 693. 45 Melber, 2003, “Limits to Liberation”: 13.

15

post-independence, that the choice made to construct it, and what has been included in and excluded

from it, can begin to be understood.

Therefore, the research question this thesis seeks to interrogate why the Namibian state would

commission and construct the Independence Memorial Museum, eighteen years into independence and

at huge cost. Central to answering this question is an analysis of the museum itself and the version of

history it presents. Importantly, when referring to the state in the context of Namibia, one is

simultaneously referring to the South West African People’s Organisation (Swapo), a political entity

that blurs the lines between liberation movement, political party, government and state. Political

hegemony has been ensured since Swapo has not only “dominated every post-independence local,

regional and national election, but has also maintained a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly

since 1994”, giving a single party full control of the constitution.46 Thus, having been sanctioned by a

Swapo government, the memorial museum is perhaps unsurprisingly Swapo-orientated. However, what

is interesting, and what calls for further investigation, is the way in which the Independence Memorial

Museum fits into a larger and longer pattern of memorialisation by the Namibian government since

1990. Furthermore, what has been memorialised and how it has been memorialised will be shown to be

in line with what will be referred to here as the Swapo ‘master narrative’ of liberation history, a term

borrowed from Heike Becker.47 This master narrative refers to the specific aspects of Namibian history

that have been acknowledged, sanctioned and included in public spaces and official discourse by Swapo

and the state. This study will be the first to analyse the Independence Memorial Museum and its content

in relation to this master narrative. The Independence Memorial Museum tells a history of what has

come be known as ‘the struggle', or the fight for independence, sovereignty and self-determination. The

master narrative of this history, constructed and maintained by Swapo, promotes and centralises itself;

excluding both non-Swapo contributions to the struggle and the events that showcase Swapo as any less

than the heroic liberators of history. Certainly, a struggle history cannot be written without Swapo.

46 Zuern, 2012, “Memorial Politics”: 496. 47 See Heike Becker, 2011, “Commemorating Heroes in Windhoek and Eenhana: Memory, Culture and

Nationalism in Namibia, 1990-2010”, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 81(4).

16

However, a history only concerning Swapo is at best only partial, as the mobilisation for national

independence begins long before the formation of SWAPO in 1960.

Methodology

As a qualitative study of a political and historical nature, this dissertation is based on literature research

and fieldwork conducted at the Independence Memorial Museum. From July 2016 to December 2017,

five visits were made to the museums. I photographed the museum on three of these visits, to use in the

elucidation of the observations and critical analyses presented in this study. All the photographs

showcased here were taken by the author. Time was spent in both the museum and its surrounds, and

visits were made to other relevant sites of memorialisation in Namibia such as Heroes’ Acre in

Windhoek and the Swakopmund Memorial Cemetery. The Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg was

visited to gain a point of reference for a similar museum in similar historical and political context, which

aided in thinking through how the Independence Memorial Museum could have been different.

At various points in this research, online newspaper articles were referenced for information on the

museum not available elsewhere. Opinion pieces and letters to the editor from The Namibian were used

to showcase differing examples of public opinion on issues related to the museum. This was not to pass

judgement on the universality or objectivity of these opinions, but rather to acknowledge their existence

in the media as a small segment of the public voice. This data was collected using The Namibian archival

resource available online, by searching key words such as ‘Independence Memorial Museum’ and

‘Reiterdenkmal’ through the years 2008-2013. At the conference for ‘Gender, Symbolic Reparation and

the Arts’ held in Cape Town in early February 2018, I was able to consult with Esther Muinjangue, the

chairperson of the Ovaherero Genocide Foundation. Her insights provided new lines of analysis and

helped to reinforce my own interpretation of the representation of the genocide within the Independence

Memorial Museum and deductions as to why the genocide was dealt with in this way.

The analysis conducted in this study features two distinct but interconnected parts. The first, based

mainly on literature research, involved defining and mapping out the Swapo master narrative. While all

the elements of the master narrative had been theorized by scholars, historians and political analysts in

17

part, all of the various elements had never been shown to be interconnected as one holistic narrative

produced and motivated by the same elements of Swapo’s particular post-independence political

culture. The second part was to analyse the Independence Memorial Museum and its content in relation

to the Swapo master narrative. It is argued that this is necessary for understanding the choices made in

the museum, the inclusions and exclusions, the symbolism within and North Korean style of the latest

addition to the Namibian memorial landscape.

The literature reviewed in this study is an attempt to map current conversations about memorialisation

mostly from within the field of transitional justice. Discussing memorialisation through the theoretical

framework of transitional justice is useful as it is a field of scholarship where memorialisation, its

politics and its relative value have been heavily debated. In the Namibian context, the lens of transitional

justice is an interesting entry point, given the Swapo government’s particular conception of

reconciliation that has avoided official or formal transitional justice processes since the dawn of

independence. As this research is concerned with the politics of memorialisation and memory, a choice

has been made to anchor it within literature offering critical perspectives on memorialisation, as

opposed to other areas such as museum studies or heritage studies, which would offer different but

equally relevant and interesting perspectives and new lines of analysis. This research is less interested

in what constitutes a museum as it is with memory politics and the politicization of memorialisation.

The reluctance to frame this research within heritage studies stems from the notion that this museum is

a North Korean one, Namibian in content only.48 Had Namibian art and artists been used in the design

and content of the museum, or if there had been inclusion of the voices, perspectives and experiences

of everyday Namibians in the exhibitions, it would be easier to view the museum as an act of heritage.

Transitional justice is a multidisciplinary and holistic field of justice applied to societies in transition,

such as after a civil war, genocide or dictatorship. Transitional justice is a “response to systematic or

widespread violations of human rights. It seeks recognition for victims and promotion of possibilities

48 Meghan Kirkwood, 2011, “Postcolonial Architecture Through North Korean Modes: Namibian Commissions

of the Mansudae Overseas Project” (Masters diss., University of Kansas): 9.

18

for peace, reconciliation and democracy”.49 It incorporates but is not limited to international law,

international and domestic criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, reparations programmes and

security sector reform. As a field, transitional justice involves states and governments, international

bodies such as the UN and the International Criminal Court (ICC), scholarship, domestic legal systems,

NGOs and civil society activities. Political, moral and theoretical issues within the field are constantly

being debated. Given the different geographical and cultural contexts, what transitional justice

processes look like can differ from country to country. Likewise, the ‘objectives’ of transitional justice

(justice, peace, reconciliation, democracy) have not always been met without compromise or even held

to with consensus. Many hold that the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)

compromised justice for the sake of reconciliation.50 It is also important to note that transitional justice,

like any other human process, can be affected by biases, prejudices and hegemonic ideologies. While

transitional justice has practical possibilities it is important to recognize that it can be compromised in

these ways, as well as by the constraint of unwilling, corrupt or authoritarian states and leadership.

Reading the Independence Memorial Museum

As a site of memorialisation, taking the past and inscribing it physically in the present, the Independence

Memorial Museum presents a specific narrative of the achievement of Independence in Namibia that I

argue can be read by the onlooker. It is argued here that the Independence Memorial Museum is

exemplary of what has been understood as a Swapo master narrative of liberation.51 As such, what is

attempted by the Memorial Museum is a key aspect of Swapo political culture and unofficial policy:

consolidation of post-independence political hegemony via backward-looking legitimation of the party

49 “What is Transitional Justice”, 2009, International Center for Transitional Justice, accessed September 15,

2017, https://www.ictj.org/sites/default/files/ICTJ-Global-Transitional-Justice-2009-English.pdf. 50 For the continued relevance of this debate, see Sisonke Msimang, 2014, “A look back: Limpho Hani, Clive

Derby-Lewis and the power of refusing to forgive”, Daily Maverick , June 11,

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2014-06-11-limpho-hani-clive-derby-lewis-and-the-power-of-

refusing-to-forgive/#.WmfM6aiWa00; Colin Bundy, 2000, “The Beast of the Past: History and the TRC”, in

After the TRC, Reflections on truth and reconciliation in South Africa, ed. Wilmot James and Linda Van de

Vijver (Cape Town: David Philip Publishers); Deborah Posel, 2002, “The TRC Report: What Kind of History?

What Kind of Truth?”, in Commissioning the Past, Understanding South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation

Commission , ed. Deborah Posel and Graeme Simpson (Johannesburg: Wits University Press). 51 The term ‘master narrative’ was first utilized in the Namibian context of memorialisation by social and

cultural anthropologist Heike Becker. See Becker, 2011, “Commemorating Heroes in Windhoek and Eenhana”:

520.

19

as the sole and benevolent liberator of the Namibian nation. Through the use of North Korean modes

of memorialisation, as Meghan Kirkwood effectively argues, Swapo attempts to “emulate the authority,

cohesiveness and directed nature of a visual culture specific to Pyongyang”.52 While similar to the

socialist realist art of the Soviet Union, Kirkwood draws on Jane Portal to explain that the term ‘socialist

realist’ would be misleading as the North Korean style represents a “curious mixture of influences from

Western monuments, transferred through Socialist Realist Soviet and Chinese works to a hybrid North

Korean monumentalism”.53 Thus, the motivation for employing Mansudae lies in the desire of Swapo

leadership to “assert their authority, modernity and secure their legitimacy”, as has been done in North

Korea.54 The North Korean design of the museum is thus key to being able to critically analyse the

intentionality and symbolic design of the museum and the choices made within it.

The research presented in this study is an interrogation of how and why the Independence Memorial

Museum presents a particular version of history. This version is not only favourable to the Swapo

political party who commissioned the museum, but exclusive to Swapo actors and events of the past.

The exclusion of events, actors and narratives are not limited to those that reflect badly on Swapo, but

even those that detract from the construction of Swapo as the single liberator of the Namibian people.

The Independence Memorial Museum, dedicated to the history of the liberation struggle, thus presents

a subjective and selective version of that history and continues to claim and present it as universally

representative of Namibian liberation. While any form of recollection of the past is necessarily

subjective, the point of contention here is the way in which Swapo has deliberately constructed and

used history for political opportunism, legitimising and bolstering support for the party which continues

to rule Namibia as essentially a single party state. The Independence Memorial Museum is not the first

example of the Swapo master narrative of history, but rather falls into a longer pattern of how history

has been appropriated and manipulated to present the liberation movement cum political party in the

most favourable light. As the years have progressed since the achievement of independence in 1990,

there has been increasing disillusionment with the party as ‘by the people, for the people’. Historical

52 Kirkwood, 2011, “Postcolonial Architecture Through North Korean Modes”: iii. 53 Jane Portal in Kirkwood, 2011, “Postcolonial Architecture Through North Korean Modes”: 3. 54 Kirkwood, 2011, “Postcolonial Architecture Through North Korean Modes”: 9.

20

narratives which problematise Swapo’s version of liberation history, such as the early resistance of the

Herero and Nama people, the ‘spy drama’, the Lubango dungeons, and the fight for reparations for the

genocide of 1904-08, are kept alive by those who continue to challenge Swapo to account for and

investigate the crimes of the past. It is in their exclusion that the harms are compounded and

reconstituted. Therefore, this study seeks to show how the Independence Memorial Museum is an act

of consolidation of the Swapo master narrative of liberation history, motivated by the need to remind

the Namibian people that it was Swapo alone who liberated them.

21

Critical Perspectives on Memory and Memorialisation

Transitional justice, or lack thereof, is a key entry point to understanding post-independence Namibia.

Having achieved independence in 1990, after enduring German colonialism, a genocide, South African

occupation, the implementation of an apartheid state, an armed struggle and the accompanying acute

human rights violations, Namibia can be recognized as a country where transitional justice would have

been applicable. In neighbouring South Africa, one outcome of the negotiated settlement was the

transitional justice process of a truth commission. The TRC was established with the “objective of

promoting national unity and reconciliation” in the new democracy.55 It sought to accomplish this by

getting at the ‘truth’ of what happened during the apartheid era by establishing “as comprehensive an

account as possible of gross human rights abuses over a period of thirty-four years”.56 The TRC was

South Africa’s attempt at reconciliation through truth, in the belief that in the receiving and

disseminating of a record of the truth, people would be able to heal and move forward.

Comparatively, Namibia underwent no official transitional justice processes. This not only concerned

the period of South African occupation, but German colonialism and the Nama and Herero genocide

too. Processes for truth seeking and reparation were never held, although land reform and amnesty were

critical issues for the negotiated independence of 1990. In Namibia, blanket amnesty for politically

motivated crimes was applied to both sides, the South African army and the liberation movement, and

unlike South Africa amnesty was not predicated on truth telling. It should be noted that in 1990,

transitional justice was a fledgling field and what the Namibian state did after the transition to

independence was the norm, what occurred in South Africa four years later was considered novel for

the time. However, the continuation of the refusal to investigate accusations of human rights violations

or even engage in these conversations reflects the unwillingness of the Swapo state to partake in

established transitional justice processes, even as it has largely come to be an expected response to

55 Bundy, 2000, “The Beast of the Past: History and the TRC”: 16. 56 Ibid: 16.

22

periods of conflict where gross human rights abuses took place.57 The South African TRC even offered

Namibia the opportunity to participate, as many crimes of the South African regime had been committed

in Namibia. When the TRC requested to hold hearings in Namibia, government leadership refused,

citing that the hearings “will not contribute to our own efforts to bring about genuine reconciliation and

to continue devising ways and means of healing wounds”.58 In the Swapo press release from 1999, the

title “It is either reconciliation or the opening of old wounds” indicates the belief that reconciliation

cannot be achieved by delving into the past.59 The Namibian’s government’s specific strategy of

reconciliation which privileged the need to ‘move on’ and forget the past will be discussed in the next

chapter, but it suffices to note here that formal transitional justice processes were not encouraged or

permitted on Namibian soil.

Transitional justice theory posits memorialisation as a form of reparation, holding the ability to in some

way repair the harms of the past, although the actual value of this is contested, as well as the fact that

memorialisation can be utilized for other objectives outside of the purview of transitional justice.60 It

should be noted that the Independence Memorial Museum could perhaps be better understood through

the lens of nation building and nationalism, and this will be expanded upon to come. However, given

the history of the land on which the Independence Memorial Museum was built, and the motion

introduced in parliament in 2011 to rename the museum ‘The Genocide Remembrance Centre’, a

discussion of memorialisation as a form of symbolic reparation is necessary.61 Tabled by SWANU

president and Herero leader Usutuaije Maamberua, the motion is testament to the fact that at least one

affected group saw the museum as an opportunity for symbolic reparation. As will be shown, the failure

57 After the political violence surrounding the 2007 elections in Kenya, a truth commission was set up to

investigate not just what occurred in 2007, but political violence dating back to 1963. Thus, there is precedence

for states using transitional justice processes retrospectively, long after the period of violations took place. 58 The original article from The Namibian could not be accessed, this quote was taken from Michelle Parleviet,

2000, “Truth Commissions in Africa: the Non-Case of Namibia and the Emerging Case of Sierra Leone”,

International Law FORUM 2: 104. 59 Taken from Parleviet, 2000, “Truth Commissions in Africa: the Non-Case of Namibia and the Emerging Case

of Sierra Leone”: 104. 60 See Kris Brown, 2013, “Commemoration as Symbolic Reparation: New Narratives or Spaces of Conflict?”,

Human Rights Review 14; Brandon Hamber, Lis Ševčenko and Ereshnee Naidu, 2010, “Utopian Dreams or

Practical Possibilities? The Challenges of Evaluating the Impact of Memorialization in Societies in Transition”,

The International Journal of Transitional Justice 4. 61 Ellie Hamrick and Haley Duschinski, 2017, “Enduring injustice: Memory politics and Namibia’s genocide

reparations movement”, Memory Studies: 2.

23

to address the genocide in the Swapo master narrative corresponds with the treatment of the genocide

in the museum and its surrounds, despite the apparent urging of the affected communities. In a survey

of victims of violence conducted by the Hamburg Institute for Social Research, it was found that

“memorialization initiatives were the second most important form of state reparation after financial

compensation”.62 In the Namibian context, the motion to rename the museum attests to the value

ascribed by the affected community to symbolic reparation. As such, a discussion of symbolic

reparation and its potential cathartic effects and moral imperatives will follow.

Reparations are generally conceived of as a victim-centric form of justice in the transitional justice

community, seeking to “recognize and address the harms suffered and acknowledge wrongdoing” for

victims of gross human rights violations.63 Under the UN’s ‘Basic Principals and Guidelines on the

Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law

and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law’ (2005), states “are obliged to prevent

violations; to investigate any violations which do occur and, where appropriate, take action against the

violators in accordance with domestic and international law; to provide victims with equal and effective

access to justice; and to provide appropriate remedies to victims; and to provide for or facilitate

reparation to victims”.64 Although Namibia is a member state of the UN, this resolution while asserting

a moral principle is ultimately non-binding. Therefore the Namibian state is not legally obliged to

facilitate reparation programmes.

The reparation forms prescribed by the Basic Principals include “restitution, compensation,

rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition”.65 Memorialisation can be considered a

form of symbolic reparation, offering the above forms in a symbolic way, such as with the

62 Sebastian Brett, Louis Bickford, Liz Ševčenko and Marcela Rios, 2007, “Memorialisation and Democracy:

State Policy and Civic Action” (ICTJ),

https://ictj.org/sites/default/files/ICTJ-Global-Memorialization-Democracy-2007-English_0.pdf: 2. 63 “Reparations”, International Center for Transitional Justice, accessed September 15, 2017,

https://www.ictj.org/our-work/transitional-justice-issues/reparations. 64 Stephen Pete and Max du Plessis, 2007, “Reparations for Gross Violations of Human Rights in Context”, in

Repairing the Past? International Perspectives on Reparations for Gross Human Rights Abuses (Antwerpen -

Oxford: Intersentia): 13. 65 Ereshnee Naidu, 2012 -2013, “Symbolic Reparations and Reconciliation: Lessons from South Africa”,

Buffalo Human Rights Law Review 19: 252.

24

acknowledgement that an act of memorialisation can confer. Other examples of symbolic reparation

include apology and even truth-seeking processes. Indeed, if we consider that every culture in the world

has some form of death rites, from rituals to tombstones, memorialisation after trauma or loss is

arguably a basic human instinct. Brandon Hamber, Lis Ševčenko and Ereshnee Naidu note that often,

and across “vastly different contexts, citizens in societies emerging from conflict have demanded

memorialisation as necessary to moving forward”.66 Indeed, a lack of memorialisation in any form can

constitute the continuation of the injustice. While the intentionality behind the Independence Memorial

Museum was arguably not to be a form of symbolic reparation, given the Namibian leadership’s

aforementioned approach to the past, the museum’s content concerning a violent past and especially its

siting on the land that was once a concentration camp, it certainly begs the question of why it was not

conceived of as a move towards symbolic reparation and thus what motivated it instead.

Memorialisation and Memory

Memorialisation generally refers to the action of preserving memory in some form. In the context of

transitional justice, it usually refers to the “process of creating public memorials”.67 Public memorials

offer visual, public and official acknowledgement of an event or person, but they also offer a particular

and subjective interpretation. Sebastian Brett, Louis Bickford, Liz Ševčenko and Marcela Rios define

them as “physical representations or commemorative activities that concern events in the past and are

located in public spaces. They are designed to evoke a specific reaction or set of reactions, including

public acknowledgement of the event or people represented; personal reflections or mourning; pride,

anger, or sadness about something that has happened; or learning or curiosity about periods in the

past”.68 As such, they are designed and imbued with meaning, which can be multifaceted. While they

can be organised and implemented privately, given that they occupy public space and usually require

resources, memorialisation typically occurs on a national level under the auspices of the state.

Museums, statues, public parks, street names and public holidays can all be forms of memorialisation,

when concerning or dedicated to events or people in the past. As such, these products of memorialisation

66 Hamber et al, 2010, “Utopian Dreams or Practical Possibilities?”: 397. 67 Brett et al, 2007, “Memorialisation and Democracy”: 1. 68 Ibid.

25

offer reminders, representations or interpretations of the past and thus share theoretical ground with

current critical debates in the fields of history and memory studies. The discussion to come, regarding

the creation and motivation behind the Swapo master narrative of liberation history and how this has

impacted state-led memorialisation, should be foregrounded with an exploration of key concepts in the

field of memory.

There exist various functions and forms of history and memory; autobiographical memory, historical

memory, historical truth, traumatic memory, official history, counter memory and social or collective

memory.69 There is diverging opinion about where one category begins and another ends, how and

whether they inform one another, their causes and their consequences. While this debate cannot be

expanded upon fully within the purview of this research, it will suffice to identify and define the

concepts of official history, counter memory and collective memory in order to develop an analysis of

the politics of memory within the Independence Memorial Museum. Official history is that which is

sponsored and endorsed by the state: it can be found within public acts of memorialisation, within school

curricula and in what is referred to by the political elite in public addresses and the media. Similar is

the concept of public history, “the story that is promoted by the government and is disseminated through

monuments, museums and school curricula”, which is understood by Tycho van der Hoog as a function

and consequence of a violent political culture in a comparative analysis of North Korean monuments in

Namibia and Zimbabwe.70 The Swapo master narrative of liberation history is the particular form of

official history in Namibia. In post-apartheid South Africa, Gary Baines explores the politics of public

history and premises this with the statement that the “question of whose version of history gets

disseminated and institutionalized is a political one”.71 Those in power, with political, economic and

social power, have the resources and institutional support to write official history. Baines uses former

president Thabo Mbeki’s “People’s History” Project as an example of constructing official history, one

69 See Olick and Robbins, 1998, “Social Memory Studies”. 70 Tycho van der Hoog, 2017, “North Korean monuments in southern Africa: Legitimizing party rule through

National Heroes’ Acres in Zimbabwe and Namibia” (Masters diss., Leiden University): 47. 71 Gary Baines, 2007, “The politics of public history in post-apartheid South Africa”, in History Making and

Present Day Politics: The Meaning of Collective Memory in South Africa, ed. Hans Erik Stolten (Sweden:

Nordiska Afrikainstitutet): 167.

26

which makes “the liberation struggle the master narrative of our national history”.72 Thus, the concept

of official history or even a master narrative is not unique to the Namibian context. However, the

monopoly of political power held by Swapo means that the official history put forward by the state is

completely monolithic and as such is understood as a Swapo master narrative of liberation history, with

the concept of the nation intrinsically tied to liberation.

Jeffery Olick and Joyce Robbins refer to counter memory as “memories that differ from, and often

challenge, dominant discourses”, or memories that have been “left out” of official histories.73 Counter

memory is thus in a symbiotic relationship with official history, as there cannot be one without the

other. In Namibia, various groups, as well as individual activists, in keeping their memories alive,

commemorating them, and calling for recognition or justice, are challenging official history through

counter memory, as will be explored in the next chapter.74 Collective memory, on the other hand, is

more concerned with the use of memory in the creation, definition and maintenance of social groups.

Although definitions are contested and can be changing given different contextual uses, collective

memory can generally be understood as the memories and pasts that are drawn upon in creating and

maintaining group identity. Chris Weedon and Glenn Jordan define collective memory as “narratives

of past experience constituted by and on behalf of specific groups within which they find meaningful

forms of identification that may empower”.75 To conceptualise of the nation as a group identity is to

consider how it is socially constructed and uses collective memory to define and sustain itself. The

seminal text on collective memory and nationalism is Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities

(1983). Here Anderson defines a nation as an imagined community, because despite consisting of a

large and differentiated group of people (differentiated by race, class, gender, age, ethnicity), they share

72 Gary Baines, 2007, “The politics of public history in post-apartheid South Africa”: 176. 73 Olick and Robbins, 1998, “Social Memory Studies”: 126. 74 For some examples of counter memory culture alive in Namibia, see Becker, 2011, “Commemorating Heroes

in Windhoek and Eenhana”; Reinhart Kössler, 2007, “Facing a Fragmented Past: Memory, Culture and Politics

in Namibia”, Journal of Southern African Studies 33(2); Zuern, 2012, “Memorial Politics”; Hamrick and

Duschinski, 2017, “Enduring injustice”; John Saul and Colin Leys, 2003, “Truth, Reconciliation and Amnesia:

The “Ex-Detainees’” Fight for Justice”, in Re-examining Liberation in Namibia: Political Culture Since

Independence, ed. Henning Melber (Sweden: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet). 75 Chris Weedon and Glenn Jordan, 2012, “Collective memory: theory and politics”, Social Semiotics 22(2):

143.

27

a “deep and horizontal comradeship” through the abstract concept of being a part of the nation.76 Again,

collective memory is inherently political as it is those with power who have the power to define the

collective. Weedon and Jordan explain that it is always “a social product… shaped by specific interests

and power relations, and the constitution of memory is above all a terrain of cultural politics”.77 The

basis of group identity is defining who is in and who is out of the group, and this is often done through

the use of collective memory. Kössler argues that the construction of a national identity in Namibia was

a “decisive framing of the transition process” to independence.78 The transition prompted the need to

define what the country would transition from and what it would transition into. Exclusion, or in

Kössler’s argument ‘amnesia’ for particular historical events and their actors, was central to the way in

which Swapo constructed a national identity. As will be shown in the next chapter, the construction of

a national identity was both a cause and effect of the Swapo master narrative which sought to conflate

Swapo with the nation, united by Swapo despite racial, ethnic or historical difference, a homogenous

‘One Namibia, One Nation’ (as the Swapo slogan goes).

Key Case Studies in Memorialisation

It is now pertinent to expand upon how memorialisation works, how it can hold promise for societies

in transition and help to achieve transitional justice goals, and how it can also hold risk. For victims of

gross human rights abuses, the acknowledgement that memorialisation provides can have several

palliative effects. Kris Brown, a transitional justice scholar, also notes the “liberating function” of

memorialisation (and symbolic reparations more generally) which allows victims to break their (often

self-imposed) silence, “unburden themselves” and have their stories be more readily understood by

society at large.79 Brown also points to ‘memory as warning’, where a society can learn lessons from

what has happened in the past. Brown notes that establishing a collective memory of an event or period

of gross violation of human rights can act as a deterrent, ensuring that we “learn from the horrors of the

76 Benedict Anderson, 1983, Imagined Communities (London: Verso): 7. 77 Weedon and Jordan, 2012, “Collective memory”: 144. 78 Reinhart Kössler, 2015, “Two modes of amnesia: complexity in postcolonial Namibia”, Acta Academia 47(1):

139. 79 Brown, 2013, “Commemoration as Symbolic Reparation”: 277.

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past so as to avoid repeating them”.80 Hamber, Ševčenko and Naidu conducted a study on the impact of

three International Coalition of Sites of Conscience on youth groups attending them. Their findings

showed visiting the sites helped with “changing opinions, raising awareness, improving relationships,

encouraging civic engagement and increasing emotional understanding of the human consequence of

atrocity”.81 However, this impact is necessarily mediated by “careful design, innovative programming

and evaluation, as well as through linking such processes to other wider mechanisms”.82 Although not

designed with the intentionality of symbolic reparation under the auspices of transitional justice, we can

nevertheless think through some of these positive outcomes as the Independence Memorial Museum

memorialises a violent past. However, this is limited by the exclusive nature of what is included in the

museum and how the human rights violations perpetrated by Swapo itself are not addressed within the

museum, thus offering no symbolic recompense to those victims.

There are also arguments that warn against the emphasis on the will to remember. David Rieff questions

“what if collective historical memory, as it is actually employed by communities and nations, has led

far too often to war rather than peace, to rancour and resentment rather than reconciliation, and the

determination to exact revenge for injuries both real and imagined?”83 This issue is explored by Brown

too, who discusses how the symbolically loaded nature of commemorating a violent past means that it

can become a source of contention or violence for members of societies who were once enemies. Rieff

points to historical political moments where the continued preservation of memory has only caused

more harm, using case studies from the world over, one such example is the continued use of the

memory of 9/11 to justify the ‘war on terror’, in which many more innocent civilians have been killed

as compared with the original event, albeit outside of the United States. Rieff premises that he is “not

prescribing moral amnesia here… Nor am I arguing against the determination for a group to

memorialise it dead or demand acknowledgement of its suffering”.84 Yet after this has been achieved,

80 Brown, 2013, “Commemoration as Symbolic Reparation”: 276. 81 Hamber et al, “Utopian Dreams or Practical Possibilities?”: 397. 82 Ibid: 400. 83 David Rieff, 2016, “The cult of memory: when history does more harm than good”, The Guardian, March 2,

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/mar/02/cult-of-memory-when-history-does-more-harm-than-

good. 84 Rieff, 2016, “The cult of memory”.

29

perhaps it would serve better the goals of peace and justice to let the past lie. Rieff writes, “it is less a

question of ‘forgetfulness now’ as of the realisation that at some point in the future, whether that

moment comes relatively quickly or is deferred, the victories, defeats, wounds and grudges being

commemorated would be better let go”.85 The premise, however, is a sticking point in the Namibian

context, where due acknowledgement and memorialisation for the history that falls outside of the Swapo

master narrative remains unattained. Yet his argument also corroborates the converse side of memory

politics in Namibia, where Swapo continues to legitimise itself as the political party for the people using

the memory of the liberation war, and the harms occasioned by this.

What remains clear is that if there are to be positive outcomes of memorialisation, they are entirely

dependent on the context in which it is used. What is memorialised, by whom and for what reasons are

political questions, as they are decided by those with or in power. Hamber, Ševčenko and Naidu also

note that memorialisation can be “used as a political resource to maintain control or legitimize positions.

Sites can become more about glorification than memorialisation”.86 The tension between

memorialisation of the past and glorification of the past is a defining feature of the discussions around

the Swapo master narrative of liberation history to come, especially when considering the North Korean

modes through which Swapo’s memorialisation ventures in the capital have been conducted. As

Meghan Kirkwood argues, the socialist realist North Korean style of memorialisation is inherently the

endowment of physical and symbolic grandeur onto narratives and actors of the past.87 Sabine

Marschall, on heritage in post-independence South Africa, comments that it is “arguably an

opportunistic means to fulfil the social needs of the electorate”.88 As heritage, or the preservation of the

past, “is a malleable, ambiguous concept, full of paradoxes, it lends itself to be utilized in multifarious

ways, supporting sometimes contradictory political, economic, social and cultural agendas”.89 While

hesitant to conceptualise of the museum as an act of heritage, this nevertheless shows how the past is

open to being manipulated to suit the specific needs of those in power.

85 Rieff, 2016, “The cult of memory”. 86 Hamber et al, “Utopian Dreams or Practical Possibilities?”: 418, 419. 87 See Kirkwood, 2011, “Postcolonial Architecture Through North Korean Modes”. 88 Sabine Marschall, 2009, “Introduction”, in Landscape of Memory (Brill): 1. 89 Marschall, 2009, “Introduction”: 1.

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A relevant case study of the use of memorialisation in a similar post-colonial context to Namibia is

provided by Justin Pearce. In “Contesting the Past in Angolan Politics”, Pearce explores how history,

memory and memorialisation have been manipulated in various ways by Angola’s ruling party,

Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA). Kris Brown describes how symbolic reparations

can be used “in battles over legitimacy, authority, morality and identity”, and this is exactly what Pearce

has identified in Angola.90 Moreover, Pearce argues that throughout Southern Africa, post-

independence political actors use “memories of colonial and racial subjugation and of participation in

liberation struggles as the raw material for the articulation of historical narratives”.91 More insidiously,

he notes that this creation of an exclusive post-colonial legitimacy was a tactic “central to the hegemonic

efforts of post-liberation governments even as their practices become more authoritarian, exclusivist

and venal”.92 The acknowledgement that what has occurred in Namibia is not unique pushes the analysis

forward, to consider how a specific type of memorialisation is not just the consequence of the Namibian

context, but the broader indication of trends in a postcolonial political culture across southern Africa,

including Namibia, Angola, Zimbabwe and to some extent South Africa. All these countries where the

predominant liberation movement became the predominant (or exclusive) political party in power post-

independence can be shown to have relied on the memory of fighting a liberation movement to

legitimize them as dominant political parties after independence, and this is reflected in their various

post-independence constructions of official history and memorialisation efforts.93

Pearce describes the MPLA’s deployment of history as a “political weapon”, wielded not in a static

way, but dependently on the “political demands of particular moments”.94 The MPLA utilized “school

syllabuses, the media and political education” to assert itself as the “embodiment of the Angolan

Nation”.95 This shifted over the years from emphasising its role as single-handed liberator, to the

democratically elected party of choice and defender of democracy in Angola. The end of the war in

90 Brown, 2013, “Commemoration as Symbolic Reparation”: 275. 91 Justin Pearce, 2015, “Contesting the Past in Angolan Politics”, Journal of Southern African Studies 41(1):

104. 92 Pearce, 2015, “Contesting the Past in Angolan Politics”: 104. 93 See Melber, 2003, “Limits to Liberation”. 94 Pearce, 2015, “Contesting the Past in Angolan Politics”: 107. 95 Ibid: 108.

31

2002 signalled a return to the historic liberator discourse, deployed concurrently with the democracy

discourse, resulting in a “politically functioning ambiguity between the MPLA’s role as a competitor

in a multi-party system and its role as a state-like embodiment of the nation that sits above the party

system”.96 When considering memorialisation, there is just as much meaning to be gained from what is

not memorialised compared to what is. Thus Pearce notes two events which consisted of MPLA

violence against civilians, one in 1977 and the other in 1992, which have been completely silenced in

the MPLA’s official version of history. The events derail the MPLA’s preferred narrative of itself as

the people’s protector, the nation’s defender and bringer of peace and democracy. As well as this,

Angola has completely “refrained from investigating wartime abuses”, with the 2002 peace agreement

between the military and the main opposition party União Nacional para a Independêcia Total de

Angola (UNITA) conferring a blanket amnesty over past crimes on either side.97 The use of amnesty in

Namibia could sustain a comparative analysis of how amnesty bargains affect the construction of

authoritative official histories for further study. In the next chapter, looking at the utilisation of amnesty

and lack of investigation for political crimes in post-independence Namibia helps to explain how a

singular master narrative of liberation history could be constructed by the Swapo party.

Leading on from this analysis of memorialisation in Angola, we note that memorialisation can never be

objective, value-free or apolitical, simply because the powers that govern society are not. As such, in a

patriarchal society we may encounter patriarchal memorialisation. In South Africa, a gendered analysis

of post-apartheid memorialisation by Sabine Marschall (2009) reveals two types of exclusion. First, that

women have largely been excluded from the struggle narratives within memorialisation and second,

that where included, this has been done so problematically, essentialising women and confining them

to representation through traditional gender roles. Marschall asserts that “the post-apartheid practices

of public commemoration throughout South Africa remain overwhelmingly male-dominated”.98 When

women are included as the subjects of commemoration, it is usually collectively or abstractly, and it is

96 Pearce, “Contesting the Past in Angolan Politics”: 109. 97 Ibid: 118. 98 Sabine Marschall, 2009, “Celebrating ‘Mothers of the Nation’: The Monument to the Women of South Africa

in Pretoria”, in Landscape of Memory (Brill): 234.

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here the absurdity of the idea of a ‘Monument to the Men of South Africa’ should be considered.

Nevertheless, the ‘Monument to the Women of South Africa’ can be found in the Union Buildings in

Pretoria. Installed in 2000 to memorialise the 1956 Women’s March, it also “more generally honours

the contribution of women to the liberation struggle”.99 The monument is a replication of the imbokodo,

a traditional grinding stone, selected from an open design competition. Symbolically the stone

represents two things, firstly, “its anti-heroic stance stressing the ordinariness of women to be honoured

here”.100 Secondly, it references the struggle song “Strike the Woman Strike the Rock”, articulating the

strength and resilience of women.

The imbokodo appealed to the competition’s criterion for the Women’s Monument to be “conceptually

and aesthetically different from the Eurocentric convention of commemorative public monuments in

South Africa”.101 However, this laudable aim is problematised when it is noted that traditional statues

continued to be utilized after this point, notably, that of Nelson Mandela commissioned in 2002. While

the understated and everyday nature of the Women’s Monument was supposed to be a nuanced symbol

of the ordinariness of the brave women who partook in the 1956 march, and challenge Eurocentric

conventions, in reality the monument was “ridiculed in the media for its inconspicuousness and its

iconographic references”.102 There was a disconnect between the meaning the memorial was trying to

convey, and what people actually perceived it to be. Many saw the ‘rock’ on the floor as a snub.

Marschall argues a scepticism of the inclusive nature of the monument, given the competition briefing

that the piece should “acknowledge all the women of South Africa, black, brown and white”.103

Marschall points out that the monument implicitly only represents “women who resisted apartheid”,

excluding those who did not resist and homogenising the actions of those who did.104 Marschall points

to arguably a more problematic element of exclusion, namely that the imbokodo “is a reference solely

to African culture and does not do justice to the remarkable show of unity between women of all racial

99 Marschall, 2009, “Celebrating ‘Mothers of the Nation’: The Monument to the Women of South Africa in

Pretoria”: 233. 100 Ibid: 242. 101 Ibid. 102 Ibid: 246. 103 Ibid: 245. 104 Ibid.

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backgrounds that characterized this historical event”, asking how coloured, Asian or white women may

see themselves represented in the monument.105

The monument not only inspires questions of which women are represented but also of how they are

represented. The imbokodo is ultimately a signifier of the domestic sphere and could thus be criticised

for reinforcing traditional gender roles. As much as the monument celebrates those who took action by

marching, it can likewise be seen as a reminder of their ‘natural’ place in the home. The monument, in

ostensibly celebrating the women who marched and then more generally commemorating all the women

of South Africa, therefore somewhat contradicts itself and does little to commemorate the other roles

played by women in the struggle. Marschall speaks to how the very commemoration of this event in

particular shows how it meets “men’s criteria of being courageous resistance fighters”, in the form of

traditional political action.106 Other contributions, such as “nurturing the wounded, lending moral and

emotional support… or providing shelter to those on the run”, and even “those women who actively

fought as MK soldiers, who led marches or spent time in prison” are ignored.107 The shortcomings of

this monument only further marginalises and misrepresents women in post-apartheid South Africa.

Many of Marschall’s insights can be applied to the Namibian context, and in thinking through the ways

in which the Independence Memorial Museum includes and excludes certain narratives, events and

actors, the misrepresentation of women in patriarchal modes of memorialisation (as well as direct

exclusion and invisibalisation) should be considered a form of exclusion.

In this chapter, thinking through what memorialisation is, why it occurs, and both the risks and promises

it holds will foreground the analysis of memorialisation specifically in the Namibian context. Although

transitional justice has not been embraced by the Namibian political machine, theorising

memorialisation through the lens of transitional justice offers insights into critical debates happening in

the field which have bearing on the Namibian context. In conclusion, I would draw attention to the

following final thoughts. Memorialisation is not benevolent in and of itself, and it cannot be assumed

105 Marschall, 2009, “Celebrating ‘Mothers of the Nation’: The Monument to the Women of South Africa in

Pretoria”: 246. 106 Ibid: 252. 107 Ibid.

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that memorialisation occurs in every context in good faith. Although it can be utilized as a form of

symbolic reparation, seeking to acknowledge and remedy harm to victims of gross human rights

violations, it can just as easily be wielded for purposes of bolstering nationalism or securing

authoritarianism. The forthcoming analysis of the Independence Memorial Museum will be considered

through the lens of each in trying to interpret the meaning of and motivation for this act of

memorialisation. Like history and memory, memorialisation is necessarily subjective and selective,

both unintentionally and sometimes intentionally. Memorialisation can be exclusive of those who are

(and whose histories are) marginalised by the distribution of power in society, such as ethnic minorities

or women, and those who are both. It is not immune to hegemonic ideologies, prevailing power

dynamics in society and political opportunism. Memorialisation is thus political, and the politics of

memorialisation are detrimental to how it is implemented and received. What is interesting in Justin

Pearce’s case study of Angola is the way in which the narratives writ into the MPLA’s forms of

memorialisation have shifted and adapted to suit changing political needs over the years. This invites a

consideration of what the Independence Memorial Museum as the latest act of official memorialisation

is a response to, in terms of the current political climate and culture more than twenty years after

independence. In the next chapter, what has been referred to as the Swapo ‘master narrative’ of

liberation history will be defined and the way in which it has affected official history, counter memory,

collective memory and memorialisation will be interrogated.

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Constructing the Swapo Master Narrative of Liberation History

The old adage that history is written by the victors exists for a particular reason. History is

predominantly ‘written’ and distributed by those with the power and resources to do so. It is important

to recognize that what will be discussed in the following chapter is not a phenomenon unique to Namibia

or its leadership; it has occurred the world over. The connections drawn between Namibia, Zimbabwe

and South Africa in the previous chapter constitute only a small number of examples within this

discussion. Indeed, Henning Melber asserts that in particular the post-independence political culture of

Namibia, encompassing the writing of the nation’s history, can be seen as something of a pattern for

liberation movements reorganised as political parties throughout Southern Africa.108 Scholarship on

memorialisation in Namibia, specifically the official memorialisation conducted by the Swapo

government, while not extremely expansive, is largely in consensus.109 In particular, there is consensus

about Swapo’s strategy of crafting a particular narrative of history which glorifies, legitimizes and self-

serves; pointed to by many scholars and referred to in several different ways, this will be referred to in

this research as the ‘Swapo master narrative of liberation history’. Mapping how and why this narrative

has been constructed and maintained is important for contextualising the Independence Memorial

Museum. The museum, as the latest installation to the Namibian memorial landscape, is born out of a

longer tradition of Swapo memorialisation and thus needs to be contextualised in relation to the Swapo

master narrative. This chapter will identify the master narrative and discuss its motivations and

implications. It will interrogate the conditions under which such a master narrative could be created in

Namibia. This chapter will also briefly take note of moments, movements and actors who challenge the

master narrative, in the form of counter memory and activism.

Even before its construction, debates abounded in the public arena as to the intentions behind the

erection of the Independence Memorial Museum, its value and necessity. Some of the public

108 See Melber, 2003, “Limits to Liberation”. 109 See Becker, 2011, “Commemorating Heroes in Windhoek and Eenhana”; Zuern, 2012, “Memorial Politics”;

Kirkwood, 2011, “Postcolonial Architecture Through North Korean Modes”; Chandra Frank, 2012, “A

Memorial or an Anti-Memorial? A Photographic Essay of the Memorial Cemetery Park in Swakopmund,

Namibia”, Counter-cultures in contemporary Africa 8(1); van der Hoog, 2017, “North Korean monuments in

Southern Africa”.

36

commenters were aware and fearful of what type of memorialisation the new museum would partake

in, an exclusionary and glorified form of memorialisation already established by the Swapo state. Dre

Ndjai, in an open letter to The Namibian, explicitly stated his belief that “our government is working

very hard to make sure that only what happened in the Swapo era should be remembered and thus

honoured.”110 Although not the only public sentiment expressed, it does indicate an awareness of the

issues that will be discussed in this chapter. The same sentiment was expressed by scholars such as Elke

Zuern, who noted that critics had “raised the concern that the museum would continue to glorify the

actions of Swapo and ignore the actions of others who resisted foreign repression”.111 As will be shown,

these concerns did not present unwarranted or out of the blue. Instead, they were based on a prior

knowledge of a longer tradition in Swapo memorialisation, based on the officially sanctioned historical

narrative. Heike Becker refers to this as the “master narrative of national liberation”, calling it the

“foundation myth of post-colonial Namibia”.112 Chandra Frank in her research refers to the “dominant

heritage narrative” of the post-independent state.113 Elke Zuern names it “the post-independence state

narrative”, writing that “the dominant current presentation of Namibian history is a Swapo-based

narrative”.114 Reinhart Kössler refers to an “official remembrance policy”.115 Henning Melber names it

the “heroic narrative”.116

What all these authors are referring to is a strategic effort by Swapo to construct a legitimising historical

narrative. It can also be understood as official or public history, that which is sanctioned and recognized

in various ways by the Swapo-led government. Essentially this narrative limits the notion of ‘the

struggle’ to the period of Swapo’s armed resistance, silences the earlier history of the resistance and

other non-Swapo actors and organisations that contributed to the gaining of independence. The narrative

also silences critiques of Swapo, and ignores Swapo’s own history of gross human rights abuses and

110 Dre Ndjai, 2013, “Keep the Reiterdenkmal”, The Namibian, October 11,

https://www.namibian.com.na/115161/archive-read/Keep-the-Reiterdenkmal-I-want-to-air-my-views. 111 Zuern, 2012, “Memorial Politics”: 514. 112 Becker, 2011, “Commemorating Heroes in Windhoek and Eenhana”: 520. 113 Frank, 2012, “A Memorial or an Anti-Memorial?”: 2. 114 Zuern, 2012, “Memorial Politics”: 496, 497. 115 Reinhart Kössler, 2003, “Public Memory, Reconciliation and the Aftermath of War: A Preliminary

Framework with Special Reference to Namibia”, in Re-examining Liberation in Namibia: Political Culture

Since Independence, ed. Henning Melber (Sweden: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet): 108. 116 Melber, 2003, “Limits to Liberation”: 11.

37

gender based violence in exile. Tantamount to this particular history is Swapo’s preferred notion of

reconciliation, which in the literature is shown to rely on concepts of amnesty and amnesia over truth-

seeking and justice for the crimes of the past.117 Having no formal truth seeking or transitional justice

processes after the transition to independence allowed Swapo to consolidate an official, authoritative

narrative that refuses to acknowledge Swapo’s own crimes. The aims in constructing and maintaining

this master narrative have been understood as legitimation, consolidation of power and protection of

the party. As yet, the interwoven nature of all these elements, in regards to what the narrative is, how it

has been constructed and why, has not been fully addressed in the literature. Likewise, as of yet, the

Independence Memorial Museum and its contents have not been critically analysed. However, mapping

and linking the contributions made by others is vital for understanding the museum in the context of

Swapo’s long established tradition of memorialisation and commemorative narratives. Indeed, without

contextualising the museum within Namibia’s current and historical political culture and the patterns of

public memorialisation already established by Swapo, the Independence Memorial Museum and its

wider implications cannot be fully understood.

Legitimising the Liberator

Commenting more generally on what happens when liberation movements form political parties,

Henning Melber notes that using “selective narratives and memories related to the war(s) of liberation

they construct or invent new traditions to establish an exclusive post-colony legitimacy… The

mythologizing of the liberators plays an essential role in this fabrication”.118 This explains both how

and why Swapo has constructed a master narrative of liberation history. In explaining this tendency,

Melber points to the ‘painful realisation’ that “armed liberation struggles were not a suitable foundation

for the establishment of democratic systems of government”, as opposed to breaking with the past we

see instead the mirroring of colonial structures and the irreversible impact of violent colonisation on the

117 See Godwin Kornes, 2013, “Negotiating ‘silent reconciliation’: The long struggle for transitional justice in

Namibia”, Working Papers of the Department of Anthropology and African Studies of the Johannes Gutenberg

University Mainz 141; Saul and Leys, 2003, “Truth, Reconciliation and Amnesia”; Kössler, 2015, “Two modes

of amnesia”. 118 Henning Melber, 2005, “Namibia’s Past in the Present: Colonial Genocide and Liberation Struggle in

Commemorative Narratives”, South African Historical Journal 54: 92.

38

“socio-cultural and political mentalities of the Namibian people”.119 As such, the memory politics of

the present are also telling of the current state of democracy in Namibia and a political culture that must

be understood with reference to the past. In southern Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Angola

and Mozambique have all to greater or lesser extents experienced liberation movements which

transformed into political parties with similar authoritarian political cultures (despite formal democracy

in some) and varying intolerance for political opposition.

Reinhart Kössler in “Facing a Fragmented Past” explores the importance of collective memory for

nation building, and the tensions this creates when a ‘fragmented past’ means that different Namibians

will have a historically unique experience of the past given ethnic and regional differences and how

they were affected by the different stages of colonialism in Namibia.120 Kössler contributes that “history

does not refer to an experience that may be considered as common to all Namibian in any unproblematic

way”, but that “a national history”, such as constructed by the Swapo state, is “part and parcel of nation-

building that in itself is not be misconstrued simply as one progressive advance towards cohesion and

integration, but rather as a protracted and more or less intense struggle and debate”.121 Thus, the use of

history to create or define the nation means that a multifaceted history is constricted to a single, unified

narrative where inevitably exclusion and invisibalisation takes place.

Tycho van der Hoog argues that in Namibia and Zimbabwe, “the Heroes’ Acres can be understood as

potent symbols of nationalist history, used to legitimize the rule of the former liberation movements”.122

In his comparative analysis of monuments constructed by North Korea in the two counties, van der

Hoog identifies six characteristics found in both historical discourses. They share “a binary view on

history, a connection between primary and secondary resistance, a focus on masculinity and violence,

the party is perceived as a family, the party is the bringer of peace and liberation and the discourse is

influenced by Marxism”.123 All of these dimensions have in part or whole been addressed in the

literature on Namibian memorialisation or Swapo political culture, but it is important to note that

119 Melber, 2005, “Namibia’s Past in the Present”: 92. 120 See Kössler, 2007, “Facing a Fragmented Past”. 121 Ibid: 367. 122 van der Hoog, 2017, “North Korean monuments in Southern Africa”: 7. 123 van der Hoog, 2017, “North Korean monuments in Southern Africa”: 48, 49.

39

occurring in Zimbabwe too means that this particular use of history in the present is not uniquely a

Swapo phenomenon.

Narratives of Early Resistance

On several levels then, the Swapo master narrative of liberation history or the creation of a ‘national

history’ can be understood in terms of inclusions and exclusions, which in this case is intensified by

Namibia’s ‘fragmented past’. At a point of both inclusion and exclusion, the narrative conflates the

nation with Swapo. Elke Zuern notes that “Swapo is equated with liberation and support for Swapo

with patriotism”.124 To be against Swapo is to be unpatriotic to the nation as a whole, so much have

they been conflated. Swapo contributions are recognized as the only contributions to the struggle for

independence in official history, and even when the early resistance to colonialism at the beginning of

the 20th century is included, efforts are made to link it back to Swapo. Sabine Höhn has called this the

“government’s efforts to reduce the complex history of the country’s anti-colonial war to a narrative of

a unified struggle”.125 Henning Melber provides evidence for the construction by Swapo of a ‘historic

continuity’ between early resistance and Swapo. Quoting President Sam Nujoma, Melber points to the

Swapo rhetoric that it “was the heroic struggle of our forefathers against colonialism and imperialism

that provided the necessary inspiration and impetus for the Swapo-Party to carry out the modern struggle

for national liberation”.126 Linking the early resistance to the later Swapo armed struggle allows for the

notion that Swapo represents the liberation history of the nation, and therefore represents the nation

itself, as a whole.

Yet, somewhat paradoxically, Ellie Hamrick and Haley Duschinski describe how “the official story of

the liberation struggle does not consider Herero en masse to have participated in the struggle for

Namibian independence – even as the independence struggle is described as a national movement, by

and for the entire Namibian nation. Rather than including all Namibians in the liberation struggle, this

state narrative essentially defines the nation as independence fighters and independence fighters as

124 Zuern, 2012, “Memorial Politics”: 497. 125 Sabine Höhn, 2010, “International Justice and Reconciliation in Namibia: The ICC Submission and Public

Memory”, African Affairs 109(436): 471. 126 Sam Nujoma quoted in Melber, 2005, “Namibia’s Past in the Present”: 105.

40

SWAPO members”.127 Heike Becker refers to an “aggressive nationalism”, which “de-emphasized

(cultural and regional) difference in favour of an authoritarian nation building policy” which centred

Swapo in all things.128 Thus despite purporting to represent the nation, Swapo is not inclusive of the

entire nation of peoples of Namibia. It is here that the predominantly Ovambo make-up of the Swapo

party becomes tantamount to understanding the politics of inclusion and exclusion in the master

narrative. While Swapo promotes national unity via the slogans ‘One Namibia, One Nation’ and ‘Unity

In Diversity’, it becomes apparent that some are more included than others. For example, the way in

which “SWAPO funnels development aid paid by Germany in lieu of reparations – to predominantly

Ovambo areas”.129 Or the redistribution of land taken under German colonialism, using affirmative

action schemes which “benefits more its main clientele in the former Owamboland” and not the

descendants of those who originally lost their land.130 In this way, it becomes problematic when Swapo

crafts historical continuity and appropriates the ‘forefathers’ of the early resistance while

simultaneously engaging in ethno-politics to the detriment of the minority Herero and Nama

communities.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the discussions of reparations for the Nama and Herero genocide.

Henning Melber in “Namibia’s Past in the Present”, Ellie Hamrick and Haley Duschinski in “Enduring

Injustice” and Reinhart Kössler in his chapter “The Saga of the Skulls” all comment on the significance

of memory politics in the Herero and Nama movement(s) for reparations from the German government.

Broadly, these movements call for reparations in varied forms; acknowledgement, apology and financial

reparations from the German government, land restitution and memorialisation. The repatriation of

human remains from Germany, taken during the colonial-era for use in ‘race science’, proved a step in

the right direction but was ultimately dogged by international and domestic politics.131 As of 2016, an

official apology from the German government acknowledging the genocide has been promised but as

127 Hamrick and Duschinski, 2017, “Enduring injustice”: 8. 128 Becker, 2011, “Commemorating Heroes in Windhoek and Eenhana”: 522. 129 Hamrick and Duschinski, 2017, “Enduring injustice”: 8. 130 Henning Melber, 2005, “How to Come to Terms with the Past: Re-Visiting the German Colonial Genocide in

Namibia”, Africa Spectrum 40(1): 143. 131 See Reinhart Kössler, 2015, “The Saga of the Skulls: Restitution without Recognition”, in Namibia and

Germany: Negotiating the Past (Windhoek: University of Namibia Press).

41

yet has not been delivered, and the demand from affected groups for direct monetary reparations have

been outrightly rejected.132

The authors all attest to the notion that reparations activists are engaging in battles of counter memory

against Swapo’s hegemonic memory of the past, and that these memory politics have very real

consequences in the present day. Implicitly acknowledged but not explicitly stated by the authors is the

fact that Swapo’s orientation towards the movement(s) for reparations has always been first and

foremost self-serving. This is evident in Melber’s argument that where Swapo does acknowledge early

resistance, it conflates it with Swapo and creates a historic continuity between the early resistance and

the Swapo-led armed struggle. It is also evidenced by the state’s inconsistent support for the reparations

movement which is explored in detail by Kössler. One example is the favouritism displayed by the

state’s dealings with the Ovaherero/Ovambanderu Council for the Dialogue on the 1904 Genocide

(OCD-1904) which is politically affiliated with Swapo, as compared to the Ovaherero Genocide

Committee (OGC) which is affiliated with Swapo’s opposition.133 When the second delegation was sent

to retrieve the human remains from Germany in 2014, the trip was announced only days prior to leaving

Namibia and the delegation consisted of “no representatives of affected communities”.134 This was in

stark contrast to the 2011 delegation of carefully selected representatives from all groups, who

throughout and after the experience were critical of both the German and Namibian government’s

treatment of the issue, and this is perhaps why they were side-stepped in 2014. The deterioration of the

government’s will to work with the groups is also exampled by the fact that negotiations around

financial reparations are currently only be held between the German government and the Namibian

government without representatives from the affected organisations or communities.135 Kössler also

comments on the 2014 repatriation citing the “concern among activists of southern and central

132 See Jason Burke and Phillip Oltermann, 2016, “Germany moves to atone for ‘forgotten genocide’ in

Namibia”, The Guardian, December 25, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/25/germany-moves-to-

atone-for-forgotten-genocide-in-namibia. 133 Hamrick and Duschinski, 2017, “Enduring injustice”: 9. 134 Kössler, 2015, “The Saga of the Skulls”: 308. 135 See Burke and Oltermann, 2016, “Germany moves to atone for ‘forgotten genocide’ in Namibia”.

42

communities that the government is appropriating ‘their’ history by infusing it into a national

narrative”.136

It was only in 2006 that the government officially took up the reparations issue after passing “a motion

in support of the demand for an apology by Germans for the genocide and in support of reparations”.137

It has been hinted that this was only because a second motion proposed investigating Swapo’s history

of gross human rights abuse in exile and thus the former was passed as an easier (and less incriminating)

alternative to the latter. Up until this point, the Swapo policy of national reconciliation swayed against

any backward-looking calls for justice. In 1994, a debate in parliament took place on the topic of the

disappeared detainees in exile. Nahas Angula, then the SWAPO Minister of Education and Culture,

said “If you want to return to the past, fine… But we must know about the consequences of that. You

will never stop anywhere. You will have to go all the way from the crimes committed from the Berlin

Conference up to the 21st March 1990”.138 The argument that to seek justice for this abuse means that

one must also seek justice and truth for all prior abuses is given as a warning, not a call for action.

Reconciliation, Amnesty and Amnesia

On the topic of Swapo’s gross human rights abuses in exile, Saul and Leys note that “the demand for

an investigation of the facts have been consistently resisted”.139 They give credence to the idea that a

strategy of ‘silent reconciliation’ may be effective for post-conflict societies, but question whether it

was in fact reconciliation that motivated this choice in Namibia. Instead, they posit that Swapo’s choice

not to investigate, to move forward with a Policy of National Reconciliation that does not truth-seek or

prosecute, is a form of protection for the Swapo party and its elites. While in 1990 this particular policy

was more the norm, it is the continued resistance to calls to open up the past that evidence Saul and

Leys’ conclusion that the past remains closed in order to protect both Swapo comrades and Swapo

legacy. Furthermore, the Policy of National Reconciliation is not a document or piece of legislature that

136 Kössler, 2015, “Two modes of amnesia”: 147. 137 Kössler, 2015, “The Saga of the Skulls”: 283. 138 Saul and Leys, 2003, “Truth, Reconciliation and Amnesia”: 77. 139 Ibid: 70.

43

physically exists, rather, it has been referred to and shaped by the rhetoric of Swapo leadership and

elites mostly in the employment of dismissing calls for investigating past crimes and allegations.

Scholars of the National Reconciliation Policy have come to call it one of amnesty and amnesia,

including Godwin Kornes and Reinhart Kössler. Godwin Kornes investigates the implications of the

“declaration of a Policy of Reconciliation by SWAPO in 1989 and the subsequent adoption of blanket

amnesty in the course of the transitional process”.140 Kornes enters this discussion through the lens of

the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) and the November 2006 submission to the International

Criminal Court (ICC). The violations put forward for investigation include incidents from the

“SWAPO’s war of liberation against apartheid South Africa (1966-1989) and after independence, in the

course of several military operations in the northern and north-eastern regions of Namibia (1994-1996;

1998-2003)”.141 The submission implicated several high ranking Swapo representatives, including Sam

Nujoma, and was highly controversial.

The submission to the ICC bought into reminder both the crimes of the past and how they have been

treated in the present. For while “representatives of SWAPO have occasionally signalled repentance

and offered individual apologies… no institutionalised measures of investigation have been

implemented by the state”.142 Kornes notes the closure function of the Policy of Reconciliation, referred

to with consensus in the literature as “reconciliation by silence”, whereby the past remains closed and

unanalysed.143 Kornes also establishes the link between pre- and post-independence political violence

because of the legacy of impunity established by the Swapo machine. Against this backdrop, Kornes

discusses the movement(s) by those who were affected by SWAPO’s violations and their varied calls

for transitional justice processes to open up a history that has been closed and to force “accountability

and/or punitive measures” for the crimes of the past.144

140 Kornes, 2013, “Negotiating ‘silent reconciliation’”: 3. 141 Ibid: 2. 142 Ibid. 143 Ibid: 3. 144 Ibid.

44

Kornes provides the essential caveat that in “historical retrospect, SWAPO’s offences cannot obscure

the magnitude and systematic nature of the crimes that were committed in the name of apartheid in

Namibia… They must be seen in correlation instead, in a way that remediates proportions, not

responsibility”.145 However, this also does not condone that crimes committed in a ‘just war’ should be

met with silence and impunity as they have been since independence, especially when it is the victims

who are pushing for justice. The incidents included in the ICC submission include the 1979 uprising in

Zambia, leading to the detention of between one and two thousand Swapo cadres in prison camps for

one year in dire conditions and between 50 and 65 summary executions during ad hoc military tribunals,

although exact numbers remain well guarded secrets. In his autobiography Sam Nujoma vehemently

denies the high numbers of cadres involved, alleging that these were the result of enemy propaganda.146

The second and much longer incident concerns the Swapo ‘spy hunt’ that waged throughout the 1980s.

It is estimated at least 2000 suspected spies were arrested, detained and tortured in the Lubango

dungeons in Angola, the majority of whom were ‘disappeared’.147

Kornes argues that the legacy of authoritarian political violence met with impunity can explain the

Namibian State’s post-independence trespasses on human rights. The incidents Kornes refers to are the

“military operations in the northern and north-eastern regions of Kavango (1994-1996) and Ohangwena,

Kavango and Caprivi (1998-2003)”.148 Although these violations occurred in a fundamentally different

context than pre-independence, Kornes explains the similarities in what has been understood as

“SWAPO’s code of conduct in ‘ordering the nation’… which the party adopted in exile, and the

involvement of Sam Nujoma as President and Commander-In-Chief”.149 Of the period between 1994

and 1996, the ICC submission lays charges of “systematic acts of murder, torture and CIDT [cruel,

inhumane and degrading treatment; G.K] or punishment, enforced disappearances, forcible transfer of

people […], extensive night time pillage as well as planting of anti-personnel mines […], recruitment

and use of child soldiers and mercenaries”.150 Of 1998 to 2003, the “full state of emergency and a

145 Kornes, 2013, “Negotiating ‘silent reconciliation’”: 5. 146 Ibid: 6. 147 Ibid. 148 Ibid: 7. 149 Ibid. 150 Taken from NSHR, 2006, in Kornes, 2013, “Negotiating ‘silent reconciliation’”: 8.

45

military crack-down” after the Caprivi Liberation Front’s secessionist attempt lead to many gross

human rights violations of hundreds of people, many of them minority Mafwe and Khwe ethnicities,

and the highly controversial Caprivi Treason Trial.151 Swapo’s continued refusal to account for these

actions or openly investigate them, both pre- and post-independence, plays into the master narrative

where these events are in every way possible silenced, unaddressed and refuted in official history and

memorialisation projects. In such a way, amnesty is a precursor to amnesia. However, this silence has

not remained uncontested, showcased by the likes of NSHR who actively pursue “reconciliation by

justice” and Breaking the Wall of Silence (BWS) who opt for “reconciliation by truth”.152 BWS is an

NGO and advocacy group for and by the ‘ex-detainees’ of Swapo whose mission is to exonerate those

who were accused of being spies, for Swapo to issue an apology, to seek psychological support for

members and to allow them to openly share their stories.153

Thus it can be seen how the Policy of National Reconciliation has been used to dismiss investigation or

acknowledgement of certain events, this is evidence of the exclusions of the Swapo master narrative

and how they are determined. Indeed, the ability to create an exclusionary master narrative has been

dependent on Swapo’s conception of reconciliation, of which amnesty and amnesia played a crucial

role. Reinhart Kössler expands on the concept of amnesia, where “forgetting is presented as a wiser

approach in contradistinction to painstaking and evasive truth-seeking” in the pursuit of reconciliation

and the maintenance of peace.154 However, he considers how taking up a strategy of amnesia for a

government that is guilty of human rights violations is above all an act of self-preservation, in agreement

with Saul and Leys’ conclusion. Kössler determines that “amnesia as a memory strategy is outside the

purview of Transitional Justice”, where amnesty can be a tool that recognizes injustice but forgoes

retribution, amnesia “implies that impunity is rendered and enjoyed silently”.155 In the case of Namibia,

however, it can be seen that amnesty and amnesia have worked in conjunction to above all protect

151 Kornes, 2013, “Negotiating ‘silent reconciliation’”: 8. 152 Ibid: 16. 153 “About Us”, Breaking the Wall of Silence, accessed October 12, 2017,

https://sites.google.com/site/breakingthewallofsilence/about-us. 154 Kössler, 2015, “Two modes of amnesia”: 138. 155 Ibid: 140.

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Swapo and its elite members. In “Two modes of amnesia”, Kössler analyses two case studies of

amnesia, the first concerning Germany and the 1904/08 genocide committed by the colonial army and

the second concerning SWAPO’s gross human rights violations during the liberation war. In the case

of the former, amnesia applied by successive German governments can be understood as a strategy to

avoid the responsibility of paying reparations entailed by acknowledging the genocide.156 However,

with the increased activism and organisation after the 2004 centennial, both countries were forced to

amend their policies of amnesia. On Namibia, Kössler notes:

“On account of considerable social mobilisation, it seems more difficult currently than in 2000

to marginalise the issue of the genocide in government policy… Thus, the founding of a

national identity construct solely on the liberation struggle and on the identification of the

nation with the party that issued from the liberation movement, has run into difficulties”.157

As such, the history of the early resistance and genocide is “accommodated in SWAPO’s image of

history, but clearly been relegated to secondary importance against the liberation war”.158

The amnesia employed by the Swapo state for human rights violations during the liberation war is

described by Kössler as part and parcel of the policy of reconciliation. Describing the negotiated

settlement to end the war in 1989 as an “elite pact”, guaranteeing amnesty and impunity for both sides,

‘amnesia’ was posited as the means by which to reconcile a nation divided after years of colonisation

and war. Under the rhetoric of the policy, ‘reconciliation’ was the answer offered in response to

continued calls for investigations and truth commissions.159 Elke Zuern notes that as “part of the

dominant public narrative, government representatives repeatedly warn of the dangers of delving into

past injustices”, justifying the need for amnesty and amnesia under the auspices of silent

reconciliation.160 The resistance of Swapo to engage in processes of truth finding or investigation is thus

156 Kössler, 2015, “Two modes of amnesia”: 144. 157 Ibid: 147. 158 Ibid: 143. 159 Ibid: 153. 160 Zuern, 2012, “Memorial Politics”: 499.

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a central component of how Swapo has been able to write a master narrative of history that essentially

attempts to limit discussion of the past and dissent from the preferred narrative projected by Swapo.161

Kössler expands on what he terms Swapo’s ‘official remembrance policy’, identifying the “two salient

conceptions that are not readily reconciled”.162 The first is the glorification of Swapo’s military actions

during the liberation struggle. The second is this “overarching concept of national reconciliation,

which… has been founded on a conflation of wholesale amnesty with amnesia”.163 Yet this can be

explained in terms of Swapo’s master narrative as the inclusion of that which legitimises Swapo as the

one true liberator of the Namibian people and the exclusion of anything that contests this, such as 1979

revolt in Zambia and Lubango dungeons. Saul and Leys note that in order to accomplish this, Swapo

has used a “variety of means, ranging from mere inaction to, apparently, measures of intimidation”.164

Saul and Leys discuss how the issue of the Lubango dungeons has been dealt with by Swapo leadership

and various other institutions and movements in Namibia. Despite the will to remember showcased by

segments of Namibian society, the official government stance, in line with their notion of reconciliation,

has remained unchanged all these years, they have “been determined to keep this history forgotten”.165

Saul and Leys compare the cases of South Africa and Namibia, who essentially reached opposite

conclusions as to how to best deal with the past. Not only did South Africa undergo the Truth and

Reconciliation Commission, where all sides were open to investigation, but the African National

Congress (ANC) even held internal commissions that investigated abuses in ANC camps. Saul and Leys

argue that having the ANC “being prepared to put itself in the dock” allowed the “TRC to make as

much progress on a broad range of other fronts”.166 The authors note that while Swapo’s notion of

reconciliation may have had some clout, it is impossible to ignore that it is, at the end of the day,

“Swapo’s desire to cover its own tracks that does indeed provide the most convincing explanation of

161 See John Saul, 1999, “’The dog that didn’t bark in the night’: Namibia’s missing TRC and the South African

model”, Southern African Report (Toronto); Parleviet, 2000, “Truth Commissions in Africa: the Non-Case of

Namibia and the Emerging Case of Sierra Leone”. 162 Kössler, 2003, “Public Memory, Reconciliation and the Aftermath of War”: 108. 163 Ibid. 164 Saul and Leys, “Truth, Reconciliation and Amnesia”: 70. 165 John Saul and Colin Leys, 2003, “Lubango and After: ‘Forgotten History’ as Politics in Contemporary

Namibia”, Journal of Southern African Studies 29(2): 335. 166 Saul and Leys, 2003, “Lubango and After”: 337.

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the path the movement has chosen”.167 As a critic of Swapo’s reconciliation policy, Beince Gawanas,

an ex-detainee of Lubango, puts the case succinctly: “We must know and we have a right to decide with

whom we want to be reconciled and why”.168 As it stands, the policy of reconciliation does not allow

this, for it refuses to get to the truth of who was victimised, who perpetrated and why. This is of great

importance, especially when those perpetrators of Lubango are still active in high government offices,

such as the ‘Butcher of Lubango’ who became the commander of the armed forces post-

independence.169 As Saul and Leys note, it is very evident that “the secret political culture of the

Lubango detention centres has been dangerously carried forward, unexamined and unchecked, into

independent Namibia”.170 In an analysis of the history of how the issue of Lubango has been dealt with

by Swapo leadership, and the threatening rhetoric utilized, Saul and Leys determine the phrase “history

was to be forgotten – or else”.171 This was justified by the Swapo formula on Lubango: “there were

spies, war is hell, reconciliation is good” and, I would add, reconciliation is silent.172 The secret political

culture is protected and reproduced in the cultivation of a master narrative of liberation history which

simply excludes narratives which challenge or reflect badly on Swapo. As such, analysing the

Independence Memorial Museum necessitates an awareness of how the Policy of National

Reconciliation, amnesty and amnesia have been shown to have influenced how history has been written.

A major silence in the literature thus far has been the reality of gender based violence in the SWAPO

camps, which has also been wilfully excluded in the Swapo master narrative, by the same functions of

amnesty and amnesia. In the literature, this is perhaps because issues of gender are often only included

as an afterthought, yet it is clear that the same motivations behind silencing investigation into Lubango

exist for what Martha Akawa calls ‘the gender politics of the Namibian Liberation Struggle’. Thus, the

lens of the ‘master narrative’ allows for a holistic analysis of these inter-linked post-independence

silences. In “The Gender Politics of the Namibian Liberation Struggle”, Martha Akawa attempts to

analyse the struggle from a gender perspective. One of her main conclusions, considering what has

167 Saul and Leys, 2003, “Lubango and After”: 337. 168 Ibid. 169 Ibid: 338. 170 Ibid. 171 Ibid: 346. 172 Ibid: 352.

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come after independence for Namibian women, is that gender equality was a rallying cry for Swapo to

gain domestic and international support but that in reality, the pursuit of gender equality was

underplayed and underachieved. Akawa writes that there are “discrepancies between the roles played

by women and the contributions made by them during the war and the rewards and acknowledgement

offered to them in independent Namibia”.173 Akawa shows unquestionably that women fought alongside

men, in both similar and dissimilar ways, for liberation and that the war would have been hard won

without the support of Namibian women. Post-independence, she is sceptical of a narrative which

glorifies women while at the same time misconstrues their many contributions, invisibalises their

suffering and which after independence did not equate into real gains for gender equality in Namibia.

Akawa shows that not only was sexual violence prevalent within SWAPO camps, it took many forms

and was met, ultimately, with impunity both during and after the struggle years. The misrepresentation

of women and their roles during the struggle, and the continued claims of gender equality during the

struggle, are part and parcel of the Swapo master narrative which cannot represent the former truthfully

while expounding the latter.

Through the Barrel of the Gun: Militarism and Masculinity

A major theme within the Swapo master narrative is the notion that liberation was won ‘through the

barrel of the gun’, yet literature on this particular theme has noted that the historical accuracy of this is

questionable, arguing that Swapo disproportionately emphasises the importance of the armed struggle

to the gaining of independence.174 The concept of militarism describes “a mindset or ideology that

accords high value to military qualities” and will be used to explain this key part of the Swapo master

narrative.175 Feminist scholar Cynthia Cockburn shows how militarism and violent masculinity share

foundational qualities and are used to prop one another up; the military complex dependent on violent

173 Martha Akawa, 2014, The Gender Politics of the Namibian Liberation Struggle (Basel: Basler Afrika

Bibliographien): 3. 174 See Becker, 2011, “Commemorating Heroes in Windhoek and Eenhana”; Henning Melber, 2003, “’Namibia,

land of the brave’: selective memories on war and violence within nation building”, in Rethinking Resistance:

Revolt and Violence in African History, ed. Jon Abbink, Mirjam de Bruijn and Klaas van Walraven (The

Netherlands: Brill). 175 Cynthia Cockburn, 2007, “Gender, violence and war: what feminism says to war studies”, in From Where

We Stand: War, Women’s Activism and Feminist Analysis (London and New York: Zed Books): 237.

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men and men being told that dominance and aggression are qualities of ‘real men’. In Namibia, Heroes’

Acre stands as a visual representation of the glorified militarism that shapes the Swapo master narrative.

Heike Becker notes the “distinctly masculinized, phallic and militaristic imagery” at the site, embodied

by the statue of the ‘Unknown Soldier’ (a man resembling Sam Nujoma with a grenade held in his

raised fist), the giant white obelisk and the mural art which showcase an armed war leading to

independence.176 In over emphasising the armed struggle, other narratives of resistance are silenced,

such as the contributions of men and especially women on the home front. The emphasis on ‘through

the barrel of the gun’ also helps to explain the invisibalisation of women in the struggle narrative put

forward by Swapo.177 Author Redi Tlhabi, although commenting on the South African context,

eloquently describes the intersection between militarism and violence against women and the silences

that follows:

“In a way, the rape of some women and children in exile debunks the heroic narrative of the struggle.

It also debunks the dominant patterns of self-glorification. The ruling party has, largely, been in denial

about this, choosing instead a narrative that speaks only of the heroism and sacrifices of so many gallant

comrades – a narrative that is true, but incomplete. The war against apartheid was fought on and across

women’s and children’s bodies. Many paid the price”.178

Heike Becker in “Commemorating Heroes in Windhoek and Eenhana” argues that in terms of public

‘memory narrations’ in Namibia, “the country’s ritual political calendar and monumentalization all

celebrate the armed struggle from exile as the foundation of national liberation”.179 Official post-

colonial memorialisation is almost strictly reserved for the actions and events of the SWAPO led period

of armed resistance. In her research conducted since 1990 in Ovamboland, Becker has identified that

among individuals and communities counter memory about the liberation war continues to contest what

she also refers to as Swapo’s ‘master narrative’ of the national liberation. One man with whom she

176 Becker, 2011, “Commemorating Heroes in Windhoek and Eenhana”: 528. 177 See Cockburn, “Gender, violence and war”; Yaliwe Clarke, 2008, “Security Sector Reform in Africa: A Lost

Opportunity to Deconstruct Militarised Masculinities”, Feminist Africa 10. 178 Redi Tlhabi, 2017, Khwezi (South Africa: Jonathan Ball Publishers): 43. 179 Becker, 2011, “Commemorating Heroes in Windhoek and Eenhana”: 522.

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spoke evidences how the master narrative has translated into a reality in which only those recognized

by Swapo have benefitted post-independence:

“The problem is that they ‘empower’ [in English] only those of us that went across the borders

into exile. But the fact that we remained here does not mean that we did not help to liberate the

land. We gave them food, shelter and information to prevent floggings and imprisonment. If

our cries were to be weighed up, they would probably weigh more than theirs”.180

This comment also emphasises both the ‘forgotten’ efforts and contributions of those who did not

actively participate in the armed war, but also the will to keep counter memory alive and critique a

political culture that has not acknowledged or rewarded those who fall outside the master narrative,

namely those who were not Swapo elites and combatants. Swapo’s official history is thus contested by

collective memory in Ovamboland. Becker also noted that “people’s recollections expressed ambiguous

memories”, such “complex histories, of betrayal and killings by both the boers and the SWAPO

guerrillas”.181 Such memories derail the notion of Swapo as the benevolent liberators of the Namibian

people, and as such do not exist in the Swapo master narrative or official history sanctioned by the

Namibian leadership.

Yet the truth of ‘through the barrel of the gun’ is questionable, and prompts deliberations on why this

particular facet of Namibian struggle history has come to dominate the narrative. Henning Melber

asserts that while “without the existence of the armed struggle, the diplomatic and political successes

as well as the internal mobilization of Namibians could not have been achieved to such as degree”, in

fact, “SWAPO’s military activities were never as effective and successful as efforts on the diplomatic

front”.182 Therefore, while the armed struggle played an essential role in the bringing of independence,

the notion that independence was won ‘through the barrel of the gun’ is a gross oversimplification of

reality. Melber argues that for SWAPO, the “battlefield offered few, if any, victories over the South

180 Becker, 2011, “Commemorating Heroes in Windhoek and Eenhana”: 519. 181 Ibid: 523. 182 Melber, 2003, “’Namibia, land of the brave’: selective memories on war and violence within nation

building”: 312, 313.

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African forces of occupation”.183 However, defeat and continued violence at the hands of the oppressors

helped to construct a “growing identity in the struggle”, based on notions of sacrifice, martyrdom and

for survivors (read as all Namibians) to avenge the dead by continuing the fight against oppression.184

Melber thus draws on Frantz Fanon’s notion of the ‘midwife function’, whereby the armed struggle

delivered a national consciousness.185 Melber shows how Swapo still maintained the rhetoric of

‘through the barrel of the gun’, by linking the negotiated transition to the armed struggle such as in the

Swapo publication The Combatant by stating:

“…the intensification of the armed liberation struggle for the last 22 years has finally made

South Africa seek a negotiated solution to Namibia’s independence problem and avert a

humiliating defeat that would shatter its dreams of being the so-called regional superpower”.186

Melber also notes that “many of the high-ranking office bearers still have a track record as comrades”

and that the “situational application of militant rhetoric as a tool for inclusion or exclusion in terms of

post-colonial national identity is common practice”.187 This has bearing on Heike Becker’s research,

where those who did not go into exile, and by extension are not recognized as having played a role in

the armed struggle, articulate and lament having been excluded in both rhetorical and political senses

by the Swapo government. While the notion of ‘through the barrel of the gun’ is thus exaggerated in

the master narrative, it has also led to these exclusions and silences in post-independence Namibia.

Memorialisation in Namibia

Elke Zuern, Heike Becker and Chandra Frank have all respectively written at length about Namibia’s

current memorial landscape.188 All share certain touchpoints, with one another and literature discussed

in the previous sections, despite the different considerations of their arguments. All note that official

public memory is dominated by the rhetoric and inclusions/exclusions of the Swapo master narrative of

183 Melber, 2003, “’Namibia, land of the brave’: selective memories on war and violence within nation

building”: 313. 184 Ibid. 185 Ibid. 186 Ibid: 316. 187 Ibid: 322. 188 See Frank, 2012, “A Memorial or an Anti-Memorial?”; Zuern, 2012, “Memorial Politics”; Becker, 2011,

“Commemorating Heroes in Windhoek and Eenhana”.

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liberation history. Chandra Frank notes that the “monuments do not stand, in themselves, as objects of

knowledge but rather are formed and dominated by heritage makers, stakeholders in the production of

(public) history and by stakeholders such as governments who decide what shall be remembered and

what shall not”.189 However, while public or official memorialisation is monopolised by this Swapo

narrative, community or grassroots examples of memorialisation do provide challenges to official

memory and construct counter memory. Yet they remain un-endorsed and unsupported by state

institutions. The Swakopmund Memorial Cemetery is not ‘placed on the map’ for tourists or locals in

the same way the museum is. A community initiative, the addition of monuments to commemorate the

genocide and the building of a wall to unify the previously racially segregated cemetery, the

Swakopmund Memorial Cemetery does not fit with the master narrative and the glorified

memorialisation it partakes in.190 As of yet, none of these authors have extended this analysis of

memorialisation to the Independence Memorial Museum, although their work is essential for placing

the Independence Memorial Museum into a longer history of how and why official memorialisation by

the Namibian state has been conducted. This research aims to fill this gap by contextualising the

Independence Memorial Museum through the lens of the Swapo master narrative of liberation history

as it is only through such a lens can the choices made in constructing the museum and its content be

understood.

Lastly, what ties the master narrative together is the way in which Swapo has executed its public

memorialisation ventures. The Mansudae Overseas Project has repeatedly been commissioned by the

Namibian state to design and build memorial projects, most recently the Independence Memorial

Museum, but also the Okahandja Military Museum, the State House and Heroes’ Acre. The Mansudae

Overseas Project is not solely patronised by the Namibian state. Other African countries where

Mansudae has been active include Angola, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo,

Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, Benin and Senegal.

189 Frank, 2012, “A Memorial or an Anti-Memorial?”: 2. 190 See Frank, 2012, “A Memorial or an Anti-Memorial?”.

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As Megan Kirkwood argues, the employment of Mansudae has been deliberate, not a matter of

convenience but of objectives. Mansudae Overseas Project is a North Korean design firm, an

international division of the Mansudae Art Studio, located in Pyongyang, the capital city of the

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). The Mansudae Art Studio is responsible for the

production of the majority of official public monuments, artworks and buildings in Pyongyang, and its

international division has to date completed four major projects in Namibia.191 Kirkwood notes that

while the projects vary throughout these countries, the ‘iconographic programs’ of the constructions

“remain formally similar, effectively emulating the Socialist Realist aesthetic of the art and architecture

of Pyongyang”.192 Her central argument is that Mansudae was awarded the architectural tenders, not for

economic favours or gratefulness for DPRK’s support in the liberation struggle, but in order to “emulate

the authority, cohesiveness and directed nature of a visual culture specific to Pyongyang”.193

In order to understand why the Swapo Leadership would want to emulate North Korean

memorialisation, Kirkwood provides a comparative analysis between Mansudae constructions in

Namibia and in Pyongyang. Pyongyang stands as a visual celebration and commemoration of North

Korean history, its liberation and its leader. This is achieved through the use of a “unified, omnipresent

visual culture, wherein monuments and visual references to the Great Leader serve to remind citizens

of their leaders’ legitimacy and achievements towards North Korean self-definition after a period of

Japanese colonial Rule”.194 Kirkwood argues that when founding president Sam Nujoma visited

Pyongyang in 2000 and actively saw and partook in a shared national history, in the rituals surrounding

the many memorials around the city (laying wreaths of flowers, moments of silence), it was likely that

he perceived Pyongyang “positively as a city remembering its past and a great leader not entirely out of

obligation, but out of gratefulness”.195 That Nujoma would want to initiate this back home in Namibia,

the two countries sharing a similar history, he himself styled as a Great Leader, is not surprising.196 It

is also relevant that Swapo effectively runs the country as a single party state, given its control of “both

191 Kirkwood, 2011, “Postcolonial Architecture Through North Korean Modes”: 2. 192 Ibid: 3. 193 Ibid: iii. 194 Ibid: 11. 195 Ibid: 18. 196 Sam Nujoma is officially titled the Founding Father of Namibia.

55

executive and legislative branches of the Namibian government” and facing no significant opposition.197

The motivation behind the granting of tenders to Mansudae was thus in the desire of the Namibian

leadership to “assert their authority, modernity and secure their legitimacy”, such as has been done in

Pyongyang.198

Kirkwood’s comparative analysis includes Heroes’ Acre, the State House and various monuments

within Pyongyang. She found several points of contact and even explicit likeness between the visual

modes and aesthetics employed throughout these memorial landscapes. For example, the use of flowers

of symbolic significance in North Korea being incorporated into portraits and murals. She argues that

this works to establish a link between the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) and the natural landscape,

to imply their unquestionable and natural belonging. The same tactic has been used in the state house,

with murals of Namibian landscapes and the reoccurring use of the indigenous Welwitschia plant. At

the time of writing, the independence museum was not open to the public, and so Kirkwood only

examines its controversial construction and not its content. However, she does argue that what can be

expected of the museum is to “symbolically inscribe public memory in favour of the post-colonial

regime”.199 Kirkwood’s argument as to how and why Mansudae has been operating in Namibia

therefore provides key insights to be drawn upon in analysing the Independence Memorial Museum, in

terms of its intentionality of design and symbolism.

197 Kirkwood, 2011, “Postcolonial Architecture Through North Korean Modes”: 11. 198 Ibid: 9. 199 Ibid.

56

The Independence Memorial Museum

The following chapter presents a critical analysis of the Independence Memorial Museum utilizing

fieldwork conducted in and around the museum, and photographs collected over several visits to the

museum in 2016-17. The museum consists of three floors, each floor housing a gallery; the first floor

exhibits ‘Colonial Repression’, the second ‘Liberation War’ and the third the ‘Road to Independence’

and the ‘History Panorama’. The main contents of the museum include photographs, artefacts and

artworks such as paintings, murals, statues and installations. Although televisions and stands for other

devices are scattered throughout, they have never in several visits been switched on or appear to be in

working condition. The painting, murals and statues are all the work of Mansudae, North Korean

signatures can be seen at the bottom left of most of the large wall murals. Information on who curated

the museum is not readily available. Throughout, there is a considerable lack of information available

to the visitor. While most photographs are showcased with blurbs of information, the exhibits do not

give a sense of context or tell a complete narrative of an event or period. For example, there is no exhibit

which details how and when German colonialism began in Namibia, its effects or when it ended. Rather,

there is a succession of exhibits which reference key events, but do not explain their significance or

links. ‘Early Resistance Against Colonialism’, ‘The Chamber of Horrors’ and ‘Namibia As a Battlefield

In the First World War’ are three sequential exhibits which give little indication of their shared

chronology. In this chapter, a comparative analysis considering both the museum and the identified

Swapo master narrative that long predates it will allow for commentary on how the latest official act of

memorialisation contributes to and continues Swapo’s master narrative of liberation history.

Memorial Politics of the Reiter

The removal of the Reiterdenkmal in 2009 to make way for the museum sparked numerous political

and media debates. To understand these debates, we need to contextualise the site and monuments which

existed there before the construction of the museum. The Alte Feste is the German Schutztruppe fort

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dating back to 1890 that has housed Namibia’s National Museum since 1962.200 As the Schutztruppe

headquarters in Windhoek, the concentration camp known locally as Orumbo rua Katjombondi (‘a place

of horror’) developed around the fort during the war period from 1904 to 1908. Today there is still a

plaque outside that states the Alte Feste was built to ‘preserve peace and order between the rivalling

Namas and Hereros’, a grossly inaccurate description of why the fort was built which has not been

amended by the post-independence state.

In 1910, the Christuskirche was built, marking “the victory of the colonial power”.201 In 1923, eight

bronze plates were installed in the church, commemorating “as heroes all German soldiers and civilians

who died during the German colonial period in armed confrontation and war”.202 Lastly, the

Reiterdenkmal was inaugurated in 1912, commemorating fallen German soldiers and celebrating the

“so-called victory of the Schutztruppen (“The Protection Army”) over the indigenous Ovaherero and

Nama”.203 Laragh Larsen discusses the re-placing of imperial landscapes in Kenya as part of the

decolonisation agenda, noting how colonial monuments in public spaces served as “visual links to the

British Empire, and served as a means of asserting imperial power”.204 However, as part of the

negotiated settlement and reconciliation efforts in Namibia, it was decided to not remove any pre-

existing monuments. Thus, the perpetrators of the genocide continued to be commemorated, their

actions symbolically justified, with German Namibians laying wreaths of flowers at the Reiterdenkmal

up until it was moved in 2009.205 On the land where a concentration camp had once stood, no

memorialisation in honour of the victims of the German genocide existed until the Independence

Memorial Museum.

200 I did not get the opportunity to visit this museum. Comparing the two museums which sit side by side would

have offered new lines of analysis in this study, and is an opportunity for expanding this study in future. 201 Kössler, 2015, “Namibia’s Century of Colonialism”: 27. 202 Ibid. 203 Andrew Byerley, 2011, “Monumental Politics in Namibia”, Nordic Africa Institute Annual Report (Uppsala:

NAI): 37. 204 Laragh Larsen, 2012, “Re-placing imperial landscapes: colonial monuments and the transition to

independence in Kenya”, Journal of Historical Geography 38: 45. 205 Frank, 2012, “A Memorial or and Anti-Memorial?”: 3.

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Fig. 1 The Alte Feste plaque

With the announcement that the Reiterdenkmal would be moved to make way for the Independence

Memorial Museum, opinions poured into local newspapers showcasing a multifaceted response by the

Namibian public. Debates in parliament where the motion was passed ensued too. There were those

who vehemently opposed the re-siting of the statue, for various reasons. Many, both German and

Namibian, cited concerns about what they considered the erasure or rewriting of history. Andreas Vogt,

a Namibian historian who opposed to the re-siting, wrote: “Irrespective of its ideological burden, and

in the context of the shared colonial history of Africans and Europeans, it should not be overlooked that

the Equestrian Monument is both part of German history as well as African history”.206Arguments of

this nature, about the erasure of history, prompted many responses of ‘whose history?’ was being

commemorated by the existing memorials. This was similar to the debates the revolved around the

statue of Cecil John Rhodes during the Rhodes Must Fall student movement of 2015. Writing to The

Namibian newspaper, John Pombili expressed:

206 Andreas Vogt, 2008, “To move or not to move:”, The Namibian, July 18,

https://www.namibian.com.na/44210/archive-read/To-move-or-not-to-move---On-the-relocation-of.

59

“WHAT arrogance it is for people who consider themselves Namibian to want to keep a colonial insult

on their national identity alive for so long after they have earned their freedom. Unless they do not

consider themselves to be complete Namibians, why hold on to imperial splendour embodied by an

arrogant statue standing on a gravesite. Would they like it if their relatives were murdered and instead of

putting a remembrance stone, we rather put proud statues of their killers on top of their graves?”207

In 2012, the centennial of the Reiterdenkmal was privately celebrated by members of the German

community. In a letter to The Namibian, J Veii and S Cloete wrote: “It smacks of arrogance and utter

insensitivity to have had this ceremony for the 100th commemoration of this colonial monument”.208

Both commentators saw a hypocrisy in the support for the statue and the continued lack of recognition

for the genocide and silence on the issue of German reparations.

However, those who argued to keep the Reiterdenkmal were not only from the German community.

Dre Ndjai identifies himself as an Otjiherero-speaker in a letter to The Namibian, arguing that the statue

is a “part of our history”, and that this “doesn't mean I am happy with what happened to the Hereros

and Namas but given the fact that our history is barely taught in schools, nor being written in the history

books; it is essential that the statue remains”.209 Commenting on the lack of recognition and

memorialisation for the genocide, Ndjai believes that the “removal has more to do with the elimination

of our history (Hereros and Namas) than what has been stated by the president”.210 These concerns

would prove to be warranted, as will be explored later in this chapter. In lieu of other forms of

recognition and memorialisation, the Reiterdenkmal was the closest reference point for the genocide

and Ndjai worried that its removal would mean “there will be nothing to show to our generation as to

what happened in 1904-1908 other than mere stories”.211

For some, the statue symbolised the resistance their forefathers waged, as opposed to celebrating a

German victory. For others, the museum presented an opportunity to properly memorialise the genocide

207 John Pombili, 2012, “Move Reiter to Katutura”, The Namibian, August 03,

https://www.namibian.com.na/98311/archive-read/Move-Reiter-To-Katutura-WHAT-arrogance-it-is-for. 208 J Veil and S Cloete, 2012, “On Genocide and Reparations”, The Namibian, January 10,

https://www.namibian.com.na/91491/archive-read/On-Genocide-and-Reparations-IT-IS-simply. 209 Ndjai, 2013, “Keep the Reiterdenkmal”. 210 Ibid. 211 Ibid.

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of 1904-08. In 2011, before the museum had opened to the public, Usutuaije Maamberua, “a Herero

leader of the main national opposition party, introduced a motion in Namibia’s Parliament calling for

the planned Independence Memorial Museum to be renamed the Genocide Remembrance Centre”.212

Maamberua commented on what he saw as the deliberate ‘sobering’ of the site of the concentration

camp:

“In Namibia the colonizers have erected the Windhoek High School, the Alte Feste Museum,

the Reiter, Christuskirche, and the very beautiful and aromatic gardens being a desperate

attempt for that environment to look innocent, holy, humane, and sober… Twenty-one years

after independence, still no symbol reminding us and the world about the genocide committed

on our territory”.213

Maamberua goes on to assert that the Independence Memorial Museum would be “redundant”, given

that “the naming of streets, stadiums, and a plethora of other commemorative symbols and institutions

already ensures the remembrance of the national liberation struggle”.214 The motion did not pass in

parliament. However, Maamberua’s remarks reveal a critical understanding of the way in which the

Swapo master narrative has been consolidated since independence, focusing on the SWAPO era and

excluding any narratives which jeopardise the view that SWAPO was the sole liberator of the Namibian

people.

Other criticisms of the project included the “price tag that could accompany the construction of the

proposed museum, the lack of broad-based public consultation and administrative transparency in the

allocation of the tenders for the architectural design and construction of the proposed memorial, to some

other general concerns relating to the socio-political, economic and cultural implications that may be

yielded through the execution of these plans”.215 In an anonymous letter to The Namibian, a self-

described ‘concerned citizen’ decried the fact that at “no stage was this project put up for competition

212 Hamrick and Duschinski, 2017, “Enduring injustice”: 2. 213 Quoted in part from Hamrick and Duschinski, 2017, “Enduring injustice”: 2. 214 Ibid. 215 Phanuel Kaapama, 2008, “Memory Politics, The Reiterdenkmal And The De-Colonisation Of The Mind”,

The Namibian, August 22, https://www.namibian.com.na/41366/archive-read/Memory-Politics-The-

Reiterdenkmal-And-The.

61

by Namibian architects, even though we have several well-qualified previously disadvantaged architects

able to design such a project”.216 The same citizen noted that no community input had gone into the

museum, and that the site of the proposed museum would be “right in the middle of the government

and administrative area, away from the very people whose freedom it is supposed to represent”.217 John

Pombili wrote that the “Reiterdenkmal statue should be nowhere near that gravesite it should be

relocated to Katutura for the name Katutura means the place where we don't want to go, hence let's

honour those colonial oppressors by taking that monument to the place they don't want it to

go”.218 Considering a more inclusive site, and one that would be beneficial for local economies, it was

suggested that the museum could be constructed at a “significant site like the Old Location cemetery,

or in Katutura, Mondesa, or Walvis Bay - any site where important historical events related to took

place - would be much more suitable from a historical and potential economic development

viewpoint”.219 Lastly, there were those who berated the idea of government spending on the museum

when ‘bread and butter’ issues are still prevalent in Namibian society. In a cellular text message to the

Namibian, one commenter wrote:

“DEAR Government, will the Independence Memorial Museum feed the poor, upgrade schools, pay

teachers' salaries or provide better healthcare? I think not. You are polluting our country with unnecessary

junk and wasting our money on yet another monument that won't benefit us. Trying to erase the past

won't build a stronger country or feed its people. Come on! Try to think further than the length of your

noses!”220

While in no way has the full spectrum of public opinion on the Reiterdenkmal and the Independence

Memorial Museum been showcased here, the former excerpts were included to point at some key

concerns which will help to illuminate my analysis of the Swapo master narrative and the museum to

come. The investment of segments of the public shown by the offering of these opinions is telling of

216 “Appropriate Memorial, Inappropriate Site”, 2008, The Namibian, June 13,

https://www.namibian.com.na/45396/archive-read/Appropriate-Memorial-Inappropriate-Site. 217 “Appropriate Memorial, Inappropriate Site”, 2008. 218 Pombili, 2012, “Move Reiter to Katutura”. 219 “Appropriate Memorial, Inappropriate Site”, 2008. 220 “SMSes of the Day: Thursday”, 2008, The Namibian, June 12, https://www.namibian.com.na/45392/archive-

read/SMSes-of-the-Day--Thursday-*-DEAR-Government.

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several things. While official memory is inscribed at the top, it is not necessarily accepted by those on

the ground. In fact, official memorialisation can instigate counter-memory discussions and activisms

by way of opening space for them. Only in the decision to remove the statue did members of the public

openly begin to publicise their particular views, and criticisms, of Swapo and official memorialisation

since independence. Particularly, the fears of members of the Herero and Nama communities that the

museum would obliterate all that was left of physical memory of the genocide, albeit that being a statue

in honour of those who perpetrated the genocide, is telling of the way in which their history had been

unacknowledged and written out of the Swapo master narrative of liberation history, one which

conflates the nation with Swapo.

The New Statues

Fig. 2 The Genocide Memorial Statue, in front of the Alte Feste with the Independence Memorial Museum visible to the left

In addition to the Independence Memorial Museum, two statues were erected in the surrounding area.

As can be seen in Fig. 2, the Genocide Memorial Statue stands in the foreground of the Alte Feste.

Shown is a statue of a man and woman standing each with a fist raised and the remnants of broken

chains attached, an archetypal liberation symbol representing the ‘breaking the chains’ of oppression.

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On the stone pedestal reads ‘Their Blood Waters our Freedom’. The phrase is one that has been adopted

by Swapo, it appears in the national anthem, and is the name of the Swapo publication also known as

the ‘Book of Dead’, which listed the names of Namibians who died during the liberation struggle. On

the brass relief below is depicted a scene of two men and a woman having been hanged from a tree,

while two armed soldiers in uniform look on. The reference is to the many executions by hanging that

took place during the 1904-08 genocide. On the back side of the monument is another relief, copied

from an infamous photo of skin and bone victims of the genocide, chained to one another. The

monument is the first act of commemoration of the genocide on the actual site of Orumbo rua

Katjombondi. However, explicit reference to the genocide, its victims and perpetrators and the

significance of the land it is situated on, is not established by the monument. No information is provided,

not even the use of the word ‘genocide’ on the monument. This is problematic in a context where the

correct use of the term in reference to the events of 1904-08 had to be fought for, was only recognized

as such by Germany in 2004 and that there are still those today who refute that what occurred was in

fact a genocide.221 According to Esther Muinjangue, even the clothing adorned by the statues is not a

historically accurate representation of either Herero or Nama dress at the time.222 This attempt at making

visible the history of the genocide in reality works to invisibalise those whom the genocide was

perpetrated against, the Nama and Herero people. The inclusion of the Swapo turn of phrase ‘their blood

waters our freedom’ on the plinth implicitly connects the genocide to the SWAPO era of the struggle,

creating what Henning Melber noted as a ‘historic continuity’ between the two, such that we view the

monument through the lens of Swapo despite the fact that the genocide predates the formation of Swapo

by almost half a century.223 Thus, even when the genocide and early resistance is commemorated and

included in the official narrative, there remains a clear emphasis on Swapo. The forthcoming analysis

of the treatment of the genocide within the museum will attest to and expand upon these observations

of the Genocide Memorial Statue in reference to the Swapo master narrative.

221 See Melber, 2005, “How to Come to Terms with the Past”. 222 Esther Muinjangue, 2018, Personal communication with author, February 7. 223 Melber, 2005, “Namibia’s Past in the Present”: 105.

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Fig. 3 The Sam Nujoma Statue

The other statue stands immediately in front of the museum, and depicts Sam Nujoma, holding the

constitution raised above his head. On the plinth is written ‘Namibia is Forever Free, Sovereign and

Independent 21st March 1990’ and the plaque reads ‘Dr. Sam Nujoma founding president and father of

the Namibian nation’. The statue outside the museum recalls a very similar one at Heroes’ Acre. Called

‘The Unknown Soldier’, it is well acknowledged that the statue is modelled on and represents Sam

Nujoma. At Heroes’ Acre, he holds a grenade above his head, at the Independence Memorial Museum

it is the Constitution. The change in accessory is telling of the shifts in meaning attributed to each site.

Whereas Heroes’ Acre commemorates those who lived and died fighting for the liberation of the county,

the Sam Nujoma statue outside the Independence Memorial Museum seems to signal a prioritization

and celebration of democracy and good governance. What is unchanged, however, is the centring and

hero-worship of Sam Nujoma in the story of Namibia’s past, the man who is still the face and

powerhouse of the Swapo Party.

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Early Resistance and the Genocide

Given the Swapo master narrative, which waivers between writing out the early resistance or connecting

itself to it, it is not unsurprising that early resistance history has been included in the museum. There

would surely have been huge criticism if it had been left out, as was shown by those commentators who

were critical that the new museum would continue to only glorify Swapo. Early resistance history is

included in the first gallery ‘Colonial Repression’. This covers both early resistance to German

colonialism, the German Colonial genocide, and extends to the period of South African occupation. In

this extension, there is created a historic continuity between these two eras of history, working to

legitimise Swapo as the true and singular liberators who continued the struggle begun by their

forefathers, or so the master narrative would imply. In naming the first gallery, the choice of ‘Colonial

Repression’ implies a passivity and undermines the acknowledgement that resistance was a defining

feature of Namibia’s German colonial period. There is seemingly an unwillingness to pre-empt the

organised resistance that is presented later in the ‘Liberation War’ gallery that only concerns Swapo

efforts.

Fig. 4 Early Resistance Leaders and Sam Nujoma

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In the first exhibit in the ‘Colonial Repression’ gallery, there are nine brass renderings of ‘Early

Resistance Leaders’. Their names are included, but no information is provided as to who they were and

what they did. Placed in between these renderings, centre stage and approximately four times the size

of any of the brasses is a portrait of Sam Nujoma, in cameo military wear, on a background of the

Namibian flag, flanked by two Namibian flags and positioned over a plastic model of Namibia’s

national plant, the Welwitschia. Meghan Kirkwood has noted Swapo’s use of North Korean modes of

memorialisation, and comments on the use of nature and landscape to promote continuity and

connection between leaders and their countries. Here, it can be seen that placing the portrait of Sam

Nujoma above a Welwitschia is an attempt to infer Nujoma as himself a vital and natural part of

Namibia. As a portrait, and in its size, Nujoma’s representation here aesthetically dominates and

overpowers the others. Given that Nujoma was not even born when early resistance was being waged,

his forceful injection into this narrative sends a message that while early resistance can be

acknowledged, it will never outweigh the importance of Swapo-led resistance, as represented by the

father of the nation, Sam Nujoma.

The inclusion of early resistance history within the museum is limited to the first gallery ‘Colonial

Repression’, to representations of identified ‘Early Resistance Leaders’ and the exhibit ‘Early

Resistance Against Colonialism’, presented through photographs and busts of male resistance leaders.

Each image is accompanied by a ‘blurb’, but holistically very little information is provided as to the

sequence of events, the main actors, the organisation of the resistance, or how or why it occurred. There

is an explicit lack of information regarding how German colonialism affected the regions, and peoples,

of Namibia differently. The resistance to colonialism was primarily waged by the Nama and Herero

people, as they were the predominant groups in the southern, central and eastern regions of Namibia

where German colonials initiated direct rule and settler colonialism. It was the German colonial policies

and treaties that took land and cattle from these groups which instigated the Namibian German war that

culminated in the genocide. At worst, the lack of information provided in the museum regarding this

early history is a deliberate choice, and at best it is poor design and curatorship. However, in terms of

the Swapo master narrative, which presents Swapo at the forefront of the fight against colonial

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oppression on behalf of a united people, it should be noted that including this early history would

problematise the notion of Swapo as representative and inclusive of a singular ‘Namibian Nation’. That

Swapo is predominantly made up of Ovambo-speakers is relevant because of the large absence of the

Ovambo population in the early resistance history. The overall effect is that the narrative framing of

this gallery creates a historic continuity between the early resistance and later period of SWAPO

resistance, however, not allowing the former to overshadow the latter, justifying its place in the Swapo

master narrative.

The genocide is dealt with in only one exhibit, ‘The Chamber of Horrors’. In ‘Early Resistance Against

Colonialism’, one photograph shows Orumbo rua Katjombondi, the concentration camp in Windhoek

situated on the same land that the Independence Memorial Museum was built. In the accompanying

blurb, this history of the site is not directly acknowledged. As already mentioned, it is somewhat

difficult to grasp how a national museum could be built on the site of a concentration camp, and not

grapple more directly with that history. Although the site was not preserved, and the city built up in and

around it over the years, this does not mean that it should go unacknowledged.

Fig. 5 Photograph of Orumbo rua Katjombondi

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The following exhibit, the ‘Chamber of Horrors’, is a room styled like a cave with a dark and rocky

interior. On one wall a portrait of a German soldier is presented and the emblazoned date ‘02/10/1904’.

The portrait and date are in reference to Lieutenant-General Lothar von Trotha’s issuing of the order to

exterminate all Herero from the region, marking the beginning of the Herero and Nama Genocide.

However, without previous knowledge of this date, a visitor to the museum would not be able to

ascertain what the exhibit refers to, as no information is provided with reference to either the

perpetrators or the victims of the genocide. On the walls of the ‘chamber’ are brass reliefs of mostly

male figures, toiling in chains and writhing in agony. Chains and shackles hang from the ceiling.

Fig. 6 Portrait of Lieutenant-General Lothar von Trotha and brass reliefs in the Chamber of Horrors

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Fig. 7 Shackles and brass reliefs in the Chamber of Horrors

The sensationalism of the exhibit, paired with the gross lack of information provided about the genocide,

does little to respectfully commemorate the immense suffering inflicted and the enormous cost of

human life. As with the Genocide Memorial Statue outside, the Herero and Nama go unnamed as the

primary victims of the genocide. In the exhibit itself, reverence for the genocide is negated by the

carnivalesque exhibit, the chaotic representation of piles of victims in the brass reliefs and the design

of the ‘chamber’ as an attraction, a cheaply immersive experience for the visitor in the darkened and

oppressive atmosphere. The choice to memorialise the genocide in this way is also bewildering, given

that there are photographs in existence which more accurately depict the suffering of and crimes

committed against the Herero and Nama people.224 In thinking through this exhibit as a form of

symbolic reparation, while it does provide acknowledgement, it is of a superficial and surface level

kind. There is no engagement with the reality of genocide and the human experience of it. I would also

argue that the graphic and explicit nature of the exhibit has the potential to be triggering as opposed to

reparative to the later generations of the affected communities. The motion to rename the museum ‘The

224 For an assortment of photographic evidence see Olusoga and Erichsen, 2011, The Kaiser’s Holocaust.

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Genocide Remembrance Centre’ indicates the desire for remembrance, but what the ‘Chamber of

Horrors’ provides is a spectacle of human pain.

Attempting to explain this treatment of the genocide in the museum through the Swapo master narrative

recalls Henning Melber’s assertion that “the glorification of liberation warfare… leaves no room for

true mourning”.225 Although not referencing the genocide here, this observation is still relevant as it

through the mode of ‘glorification’ that the museum and everything within it has been designed. In

analyses of the work of Mansudae Overseas Project and the memorial landscape of Pyongyang, we see

that the glorification of violent history is a mode of North Korean postcolonial memorialisation that has

been imported into Namibia through Heroes’ Acre and now The Independence Memorial Museum. The

first gallery works to solidly conflate early resistance narratives with the later formation of Swapo. Sam

Nujoma is consistently iconised throughout, to cement him firmly within this narrative. The

invisibalisation of the victims of the genocide can be explained with reference to the “aggressive

nationalism” pursued by Swapo, which “de-emphasized (cultural and regional) difference in favour of

an authoritarian nation building policy” and extended this to the construction of an official history.226

Esther Muinjangue affirms that the Swapo led government whose support base is the majority Ovambo

ethnic group, was not affected by the German and Herero war, or the genocide, and hence do not

necessarily associate themselves with that history. 227 It is my interpretation that this explains the flippant

and vague way in which the genocide is dealt with in the museum, as it is not a history Swapo stands

to benefit from in commemorating in any genuine way.

Liberation Through the Barrel of the Gun

The glorification of violence is continued in the presentation of the ‘Liberation War’ in the next gallery.

Immediately preceding it, the ‘Colonial Repression Gallery’ ends with a statue of Sam Nujoma, in

military wear with his fist raised is set against a painted Namibian landscape, repeating the motif of

hero worship and the close link between Sam Nujoma and the country. It also showcases a painting

225 Melber, 2005, “Namibia’s Past in the Present”: 102. 226 Becker, 2011, “Commemorating Heroes in Windhoek and Eenhana”: 522. 227 Esther Muinjangue, 2018, Personal communication with author, February 16.

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entitled ‘The Attack on Omugulugwombashe’. The events of Omugulugwombashe are incorporated

into the Swapo master narrative, which has marked it as the beginning of the struggle for independence.

It is celebrated and remembered as the first military action undertaken by Swapo, despite the fact that

the attack was unanticipated and was a military defeat. August 26, the day of the South African attack

on Omugulugwombashe in 1966, is celebrated as the national holiday Heroes’ Day in Namibia.

However, there exists another Heroes’ Day that is “observed by Nama-speaking communities to

commemorate the death of Kaptein Hendrik Witbooi”.228 For Herero-speakers, there are several Heroes’

Days that are observed by the different leaders of families, which also culminate in a day of celebration

by the communities. It is important to note that these unofficial Heroes’ Days centre on the early history

of the German-Nama and German-Herero wars, and represent a rejection and deviation from the Swapo

master narrative and who it celebrates as the country’s heroes. The placement of ‘The Attack on

Omugulugwombashe’ at the end of the ‘Colonial Repression Gallery’ attests to the adherence of the

museum to the Swapo master narrative, utilizing a Swapo battle to signal the end of repression and the

beginning of warfare for liberation. To emphasise this further, the last exhibit in the ‘Colonial

Repression’ gallery proclaims the ‘The Formation of Swapo’, gives the date 19 April 1960, and

displayed are photographs of a young Sam Nujoma and Andimba Toivo Ya Toivo. Although Sam

Nujoma is the father of the nation, it was Toivo Ya Toivo who founded the party. No acknowledgement

is made of Swapo’s predecessor the OPO, or Namibia’s oldest political party SWANU formed in 1959.

This is a clear signalling that is less of an independence museum as much as it is a Swapo museum.

228 Zuern, 2012, “Memorial Politics”: 499.

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Fig. 8 The Attack on Omugulugwombashe

Upon entering the ‘Liberation War’ gallery, one is met with the sight of a life-size (plastic) military

tanker, setting the tone for the entire gallery which is explicitly militaristic. The content of this gallery,

in its masculine and militarist imagery and symbolism, adheres to the Swapo master narrative in which

the liberation war was won ‘through the barrel of a gun’. Heike Becker argues that the prioritisation of

the armed struggle conducted from exile in Swapo’s ‘foundation myth’ “legitimates and authorizes the

power of the post-colonial elite as the sole, heroic liberators from apartheid and colonialism”.229

However, the ‘through the barrel of the gun’ narrative contradicts evidence that SWAPO military

actions were not that successful, that it was more so the inability of South Africa to continue and justify

its mandate rule and the intervention of the UN that actually turned the tide in favour of independence.230

As such, we need to question what is to be gained by Swapo exaggerating the success and significance

of the period of Swapo-led military action. One answer is that it was through the taking up of an armed

229 Becker, 2011, “Commemorating Heroes in Windhoek and Eenhana”: 520. 230 See Becker, 2011, “Commemorating Heroes in Windhoek and Eenhana”; Melber, “’Namibia, land of the

brave’: selective memories on war and violence within nation building”; Kössler, 2007, “Facing a Fragmented

Past”.

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liberation struggle, which no other liberation organisation in Namibia decided upon, that SWAPO was

recognized as the “sole and authentic representative of the Namibian people” United Nations General

Assembly in 1976.231 The title of Sam Nujoma’s autobiography Where Others Waivered (2001) is

arguably in reference to the choice to take up arms, disparaging of those who ‘waivered’. Thus, the

armed struggle is a vital justifying factor for Swapo’s claim to universal representation of the Namibian

people and continued political hegemony and power in post-independence. The museum can thus be

seen as another example of how Swapo legitimizes party rule, in the same way Tycho van der Hoog

argues that Heroes’ Acre does.232

Totally unrepresented in this gallery are the experiences of those Namibians who lived through the

liberation war, as combatants but especially as civilians. Photographs are displayed in exhibits such as

such as ‘Conventional Warfare’ and ‘Guerrilla Operations’. Predominantly these photographs are of

men in uniform, attesting to the military-masculinity complex that drives the narrative of ‘through the

barrel of the gun’. There is very little contextual information provided as to how people went into exile,

where they would go or how they would live. However, life within Namibia for non-combatants during

the liberation war is not included in any way. One exhibit entitled ‘Civilian Support for PLAN

Combatants’ includes a painting depicting women helping a wounded soldier, a man and a woman in

embrace suggestive of a romantic relationship between a combatant and a civilian, and images of people

celebrating and providing strategic assistance.233 The implication is that there were good, mutually

beneficial relationships between combatants and civilians.

231 Christopher Saunders, 2003, “Liberation and Democracy”: 94. 232 See van der Hoog, 2017, “North Korean monuments in Southern Africa”. 233 The People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN) was the military wing of SWAPO.

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Fig. 9 Military tanker in the Liberation War gallery

This bears resemblance to Terri Barnes critique of the ‘classic nationalist narrative’ where the

Zimbabwean government projected the image of the benevolent soldier and promoted the idea that

liberation army soldiers were “welcomed, protected and supported by rural people”, as they sometimes

were, but there is also irrefutable evidence to the contrary which goes ignored.234 In Namibia too the

reality is that there are more ‘complex histories’ where PLAN combatants were sometimes feared by

Namibian civilians just as much as the South African soldiers.235 These histories still exist in oral form,

forming counter memory to the master narrative but kept alive by those who continue to share their

stories such as with researcher Heike Becker. Kris Brown noted a strategy to combat elite

memorialisation from the top which poses the risk of dividing rather than uniting societies post conflict.

Specifically, it was to encourage commemoration at grassroots and community levels, which “puts non-

combatants on the commemorative foreground, specifically in a way that brings out hidden stories and

234 Terri Barnes, 2006, “Flame: A Zimbabwean Story”, in Black and White in Colour: African History On

Screen, ed. Richard Mendelsohn and Vivian Bickford-Smith (Athens: Ohio University Press): 7. 235 Becker, 2011, “Commemorating Heroes in Windhoek and Eenhana”: 523.

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discourses”, exactly that which is missing in the Independence Memorial Museum.236 Oral history

methodology can be useful in supporting and disseminating counter memory, as it “claims to be more

democratic than other historiographical methodologies because it provides an alternative viewpoint

from below, a viewpoint that conventional methodology disenfranchises”.237 At the Johannesburg

Apartheid Museum, oral history has been recorded in the forms of ordinary people speaking about their

experiences of apartheid. Videos accompanying exhibits such as ‘The Significance of 1976’, where

adults speak of their involvement in the protests as youths, provide historical testimony that one does

not have access to in other formats. Unlike early resistance history, there are Namibians alive today

who lived through the liberation war. Their insights and testament could have provided content for the

Independence Memorial Museum such as at the Johannesburg Apartheid Museum. The inclusion of

first-hand narratives not only creates a valuable archive, but contributes to a visitor’s ability to

empathise and relate to a history they might have no other connection with. What is ‘risked’ for Swapo

would be the coming to light of stories of “betrayal and killings” alluded to by Heike Becker.238 The

motivation behind excluding such history from below is twofold and arguably an act of self-

preservation. An ordinary history that does not privilege and centre Swapo is one which is perceived as

dangerous as it derails the notion of the single liberator, but worse yet would be a history that details

the harms and violations committed by Swapo, derailing the notion of Swapo as the people’s party.

Perhaps one of the most shockingly irreverent exhibits at the Independence Memorial Museum is the

room dedicated to the Cassinga Massacre. A statue of a bomb, with human figures carved within it, sits

in the middle of this room, with the words ‘Kassinga!! Accuse’ written on the base. A large wall mural

is entitled ‘Massacre of Namibians by South African Apartheid Regime: The Cassinga Massacre 4th

May 1978’. Another mural depicts the aftermath of the attack, the destroyed camp ablaze and bodies

strewn on the ground. The last mural, ‘Attacks on Refugee Camp’, shows the destroyed settlement.

236 Brown, 2013, “Commemoration as Symbolic Reparation”: 286. 237 Olick and Robbins, 1998, “Social Memory Studies”: 126. 238 Becker, 2011, “Commemorating Heroes in Windhoek and Eenhana”: 523.

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Fig. 10 The bomb statue, reads “Kassinga!! Accuse”

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Fig. 11 Massacre of Namibian by South African Apartheid Regime: The Cassinga Massacre 4th May, 1978

Fig. 12 A close up of the Cassinga Massacre mural

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The Cassinga Massacre was an attack by the South African Defence Force on a Swapo camp in Angola.

Women, teenagers and children accounted for more than half of the 624 deaths. Both Swapo’s insistence

that it was a refugee camp, and the apartheid government’s insistence that is was a military base, are

somewhat misleading.239 At the time SWAPO used Cassinga, as further justification for the liberation

war, emphasising the cold-blooded attack by South African forces on innocent civilian women and

children. As such, within the Swapo master narrative, that Cassinga was a refugee camp has been

maintained and is exclusively referred to as such in this exhibit. Moreover, the Cassinga exhibit makes

use of highly sexualised representations of women’s bodies. In the mural, women’s breasts are exposed

and their clothing torn, with connotations of sexual violence although no evidence of this happening at

the Cassinga massacre exists. Representation of violence in this manner is not necessarily

commemoration, its graphic and sexualized nature detracts rather than contributes from its cathartic

value. Again, it relates to Henning Melber’s assertion that the glorification narrative leaves no room for

‘true mourning’. In terms of how this contributes to and echoes Swapo’s narrative, the choice to display

women in this exhibit, in numbers unprecedented in the rest of the museum, is to draw on the idea that

women were victims for whom Swapo were fighting. The nudity only further implies the vulnerability

of women. In one still, a teddy bear can be seen next to a woman with bared breast, the implication is

possibly that she is a mother who has lost a child. Aside from the artistic renderings, there is no

information provided as to what happened at Cassinga. Nor is there any reference to the ways in which

people at Cassinga countered and resisted the attack, they are only represented as victims without

agency, which is compounded by the over representation of women and children bearing the brunt of

the attack. The next section will expand upon the representation of women in the museum.

Women in the Independence Memorial Museum

In 2005, Sam Nujoma was “accorded the official title Founding Father of the Namibian Nation by an

act of parliament”.240 In terms of a mother of the nation, no woman has been celebrated in the same

way as Sam Nujoma. As the father figurehead, Sam Nujoma is ascribed power, status and social capital;

239 See Christian Williams, 2010, “’Remember Cassinga?’ An Exhibition of Photographs and Histories”, Kronos

(36). 240 Kornes, 2013, “Negotiating ‘silent reconciliation’”: 2.

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it is the embodiment of patriarchy in action. That there is no mother means that no woman has been

granted the same power or is acknowledged and revered in the same way. Yet the nation itself is

gendered as female. Martha Akawa notes that one’s “motherland, as many nations are referred to, is

appropriated as maternal and there is a strong desire (always masculine) to love, posses, protect and

even die for her”.241 The inherent irony is that Namibia is a motherland with no mother. The construction

of the nation as female thus serves a purpose: it motivates love, support and defence of the nation. It is

a tactic of nationalism that helps to define the nation, and thus traditional gender roles are inscribed into

political culture. Gendering the nation as female evokes the need for it to be defended. The

representation of women as victims without agency in the ‘Cassinga’ exhibit is an extension of this.

There are several instances in the museum where women are excluded and written out of the historical

narrative. In the ‘Chamber of Horrors’, only two female figures are represented. One as a brass relief

on the wall, holding a young child with a broken chain attached to her outstretched arm as if in a

defensive position. The other a statue of a woman, cradling a man in chains, reminiscent of

Michelangelo’s Virgin Mary cradling Jesus. What is curious about this exhibit, and these two

representations of the female body, is that the genocide famously targeted women and children, along

with men. The extermination order read: Within the German borders every Herero, with or without a

gun, with or without cattle, will be shot. I will no longer accept women and children, I will drive them

back to their people or I will let them be shot at. The chamber, however, only presents male figures as

suffering the genocide as seen in the brass reliefs on the wall. The two women are posited in a traditional

gender role of providing nurture and care, and responsibility for children. Arguably they represent

femininity, but not the reality of women during the genocide. This lack of representation misconstrues

the way in which the extermination order affected women equally alongside men. Why women are

excluded in this exhibit cannot really be explained in terms of the self-serving Swapo master narrative,

however, it does attest to the masculine bias of such a narrative which always assumes a person is male;

241 Akawa, 2014, The Gender Politics of the Namibian Liberation Struggle: 84.

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when photographs show women in the ‘Liberation War’ gallery, they are consistently referred to as

‘female combatants’, but photographs depicting men do not differentiate by stating ‘male combatants’.

Fig. 13 A statue portrays a woman cradling a man in chains

Another exhibit where women are excluded is ‘Namibian Political Prisoners on Robben Island’ in the

‘Colonial Repression’ gallery. As Robben Island was a men’s prison, no women are acknowledged in

this exhibit, despite the fact that many were imprisoned over the years by the South African regime.242

As such, only men are represented here as political prisoners and the narratives of women who were

imprisoned elsewhere in South Africa and Namibia for their political beliefs and actions are excluded

and invisibalised within the political prisoner narrative. Women such as Ida Jimmy, Rauna Nambinga

and Anna Nghaihondjwa are as much deserving of recognition as the men who were imprisoned on

Robben Island, but they are ignored, the specific harms they suffered as female prisoners remain

unacknowledged. The glorification narrative that informs the Independence Memorial Museum can

242 See Akawa, 2014, The Gender Politics of the Namibian Liberation Struggle.

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perhaps explain this, as no other prison holds as much political capital and infamy as Robben Island,

thus their inclusion is deemed unnecessary.

Fig. 14 Male Namibian Political Prisoners on Robben Island

Generally, the effort to include women in the ‘Liberation War’ gallery is superficial and relies solely

on visual representation. Women are depicted in photographs, albeit in fewer numbers, alongside men

as members of the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN). Women are shown carrying weapons

and in uniform. Martha Akawa addresses the idea that women did indeed fight alongside men in PLAN.

She notes that although not equal in numbers, many women were PLAN fighters on the frontlines. More

were nurses than combatants, but some did see active battle and women participated in multifaceted

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ways “as combatants, spies, providers of food, information, etc.”243 Her critique is that despite this,

women often did not make it into leadership positions within the military unit, and that then and now

Swapo leadership is dominated by men.244 While Swapo pushed the idea that the liberation war was

also a fighting front for gender equality, in reality, they were not stepping up to the plate in rewarding

women with positions in leadership. It is also noteworthy that the only woman named in the gallery is

Aira Shikwambi, a member of the Executive Committee of the Swapo Women’s Council. No exhibition

is dedicated to the Swapo Women’s Council, which did important work such as mobilising, educating,

and fundraising for the cause as well representing the women of Swapo and advocating for all Namibian

women. More generally, there is no exhibit which addresses the reality of women’s contributions or

suffering within the liberation struggle, such as the sexual exploitation of women in camps in exile.245

Akawa notes how Swapo thus uses a dual representation of women. On the one hand, they were glorified

as active and equal fighters in the war for liberation, but they were also represented as victims in an

attempt to rally domestic and international outrage at the South African occupation and thus rally

support for Swapo.246 Both representations of women can be seen in the Independence Memorial

Museum. That women were victims to Swapo perpetrators of gender based violence is silenced and

omitted.

The question of why women are so under and misrepresented, in this museum and in its origins in the

Swapo based narrative of liberation history, might have several answers. One which particularly strikes

a chord is Martha Akawa’s notion that the “issue of gendered politics seems to have been neglected in

the historiography to date as it has the potential of staining the sanitized and heroic version of the

liberation struggle”.247 The perpetration of gender based violence, rife in the exile camps, would

problematise the notion of Swapo as liberator. Thus Swapo deliberately writes gender politics out of

the narrative, or simply relies on a binary notion of women in the war. Of course, the dual representation

of women, as equal participants and as vulnerable victims, misses the nuance, fluidity and complexity

243 Akawa, 2014, The Gender Politics of the Namibian Liberation Struggle: 12. 244 Ibid. 245 Ibid. 246 Ibid: 2. 247 Ibid.

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of women and their varied roles in the struggle. Women are considered only in as much as their inclusion

helps to legitimate Swapo’s ideology and projected image of itself. Women are represented simply as

representations, idealised in their femininity, and not as complex, living and breathing actors in this

particular narrative. The museum’s particular oversight of women and gender politics only goes to show

that politics, history and glory are still a man’s game.

Expunging the Record

Lastly, what is achieved in the Independence Memorial Museum is an expunging of the record of gross

human rights violations perpetrated by Swapo, in line with the master narrative of liberation history.

Excluded from the museum are the same controversies that have never been addressed in official history

or investigated with any consequence, such as the Lubango dungeons and sexual abuse in Swapo exile

camps. Where the museum could have offered a space in which to grapple with these issues, they have

yet again been silenced and excluded. Also excluded in the museum is the existence of other liberation

movement and political parties whose existence pose a threat to the notion of Swapo as the ‘one true

liberator’, unto which their political hegemony post-independence is predicated. The narrative put

forward by the museum is simply the version of history that Swapo wishes to put forward, that which

shows it in the most favourable light. Included are actors and events that proffer Swapo as the true and

singular liberators of the Namibian people. Symbolically, Swapo and Sam Nujoma are conflated with

the Namibian nation through the repetitive iconisation of Nujoma throughout the museum. The museum

ends with a mural, ‘Long Live Namibian Independence!’, showcasing the diversity of the Namibian

nation. The Swapo colours, red, green and blue, shine out from the sun, and an outline of Sam Nujoma

is painted above and larger than the rest of the figures. An obvious attempt at inclusion (presented

nowhere else in the museum) shows a white farmer, a man in a wheelchair, and a female domestic

worker. Where women once held guns, they now hold brooms. The women in this mural represent a

regression back to the placing of women in traditional roles such as cleaners and schoolteachers.

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Fig. 15 Long Live Namibian Independence!

The Independence Memorial Museum essentially fails in its titular functions, as a museum and a

memorial. In as much as a museum should provide educational and archival outcomes, this museum is

grossly uninformative and relies upon interpretive North Korean art. As a memorial, it succeeds only

in as much as a memorial erected in the honour of a political party by the very same political party can:

a self-serving tool of propaganda. As a form of reparation or commemoration for those who died, and

for those who survived but suffered harm and loss in the struggle for independence, there is little-to-no

justice or remedy offered by the Independence Memorial Museum. The exhibit for the genocide in the

museum and the monument outside do not even acknowledge the identity of those who were the victims.

Neither is there any acknowledgement of the proliferation of the legacy of the genocide into

independence, where reparations from the German government are still being demanded and denied at

every turn. Likewise, independence is presented at the end of the museum as a celebration, but there is

no actual engagement with Namibia as an independent state. This seems odd in an Independence

Memorial Museum. I would argue that this attests to the use of history in the museum as a conduit for

the retrospective legitimation of Swapo. As opposed to reflecting on what has changed in Namibia since

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1990, the museum reads as a history lesson aiming to make us forget the trials and tribulations of the

present through the grandeur of the past.

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Conclusion

The research presented here has attempted to critically analyse the Independence Memorial Museum

and the particular version of history it puts forth. Having been commissioned by the state, and where in

Namibia this is effectively a single party state which can be described as a form of ‘democratic

authoritarianism’, it is safe to presume that the Swapo Party of Namibia had unrestricted influence and

control over the construction of the museum. The 2011 motion by SWANU president and Herero leader

Usutuaije Maamberua to rename the museum ‘The Genocide Remembrance Centre’ is one testament

to this. Moreover, the evidence of this resides within the Independence Memorial Museum itself. My

research interest in the museum began with a visit in 2016, where I could not reconcile with the fact

that Swapo was presented as the singular contributor to the achievement of independence, as such it

struck me as a Swapo museum more than one which gave an honest account of how the struggle for

independence was waged in Namibia. Thus began an investigation into how a liberation history had

previously been constructed and sanctioned by the Swapo state.

An analysis of the Independence Museum required an investigation into memory politics in Namibia.

Based on literature research on the politics of memory and memorialisation in Namibia, a framework

of reference was identified in the notion of a Swapo master narrative of liberation history. The concept

of a ‘master narrative’ of history, utilized throughout this research, refers to the ways in which Swapo

has been shown to selectively and subjectively remember and construct the past, creating an official or

public history which is always favourable to the party. It puts forward a singular and universalised

national history of Namibia, claiming liberation as the national history of the country. The foundation

myth of many other southern African countries has been based on the theme of liberation and this is not

unique to the rule of Swapo in Namibia. Zimbabwe, Angola, Mozambique and South Africa to varying

degrees all have their own master narratives of history. However, the newly built Independence

Memorial Museum inaugurated in 2014 offers new insight into the longevity of Swapo’s master

narrative twenty-four years into independence.

The creation of an authoritative master narrative was reliant upon certain conditions prior to and

following the transition to independence. Arguably this begins in 1976 with the recognition of SWAPO

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as the ‘sole and authentic representative of the Namibian people’ by UN resolution 31/146. Moving

forward into the period of transition, the government’s Policy of National Reconciliation put forward

the notion that reconciliation in Namibia could not be achieved by delving into the past and must look

forward to a united future. As such, no transitional justice mechanisms were employed, apart from the

deployment of amnesty for political crimes committed in the past. Although this was arguably a norm

for the time, four years later when South African began its truth commission process, the Namibian

state declined an invitation to become involved in the TRC for crimes the South African apartheid state

committed on Namibian soil. Up till today, calls for similar processes of investigating truth have been

refused by the state, still citing the Policy of National Reconciliation. Scholars and analysts have come

to understand this policy as one of ‘silent reconciliation’, reliant upon amnesty and amnesia for crimes

committed in the past. As opposed to the genuine belief in the policy to achieve peace and reconciliation,

authors like John Saul and Colin Leys assert that “Swapo’s desire to cover its own tracks that does

indeed provide the most convincing explanation of the path the movement has chosen”.248 Without the

impetus on discovering and creating a record of the truth, such as was attempted by the TRC, truth has

been defined and sanctioned in the official sphere almost singularly by Swapo as compared with South

Africa, which has a more balanced and ground-up record of truth.

What motivates the Swapo master narrative, and what it accomplishes, is a means by which the history

of liberation is utilised to legitimate Swapo as the true and sole liberator of the Namibian people, in an

attempt to secure continued loyalty in a post-independence era where Swapo is increasingly being

criticised and questioned. The Independence Memorial Museum can thus be read as a consolidation and

continuation of this narrative, intended to convey the message to the Namibian people, ‘remember who

liberated you’. As such, in the Swapo-based narrative of liberation history “Swapo is equated with

liberation and support for Swapo with patriotism”.249 It tends to limit ‘the struggle’ to the period of

Swapo’s armed resistance post-1966. In writing out resistance narratives that pre-date Swapo or non-

Swapo contributions to liberation, the party centres itself in the story of national liberation. Where it is

248 Saul and Leys, 2003, “Lubango and After”: 337. 249 Zuern, 2012, “Memorial Politics”: 497.

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acknowledged, there is a creation of a form of historic continuity in regards to early resistance and the

later Swapo-led resistance, where Swapo is shown to have taken up the flame of resistance from their

forefathers. Linking the early resistance to the later Swapo armed struggle allows for the notion that

Swapo represents the liberation history of the nation, and therefore represents the nation itself, as a

whole. Excluded from the master narrative are actors and events that destabilise the image of Swapo as

the benevolent liberator, such as the ‘spy drama’, the Lubango Dungeons and widespread gender based

violence within the exile camps. Even those who detract from the notion of Swapo as the singular

liberator are excluded, such as other political parties, trade unions, Churches and the effects of student

mobilisation. In particular, the dealing of the state with the Herero and Nama genocide of 1904-08, both

in the past and in the museum, reflects the ‘aggressive nationalism’ of the party which rejects differences

in ethnic and regional histories in favour of a unified history that presents all Namibians as having

suffered equally under colonialism. This has influenced the government’s varying support for the Nama

and Herero reparations movements over time, and also the conspicuous lack of state-led

commemoration of the genocide.

Drawing upon the existent literature on the subject of memory politics in Namibia, this research utilized

photography and critical thematic analysis to interrogate the Independence Memorial Museum in

reference to the identified Swapo master narrative of liberation history. The museum was found to be

in direct keeping with the already established narrative, with the very same inclusions and exclusions

in the narrative incorporated or missing from the museum. The same themes were identified in each,

including the treatment of early resistance and genocide history, liberation through the barrel of the gun,

the representation of women in the liberation struggle and an expunging of the record of gross human

rights abuses perpetrated by the SWAPO liberation movement. Early resistance history and the

genocide, when acknowledged in the museum, are presented vaguely and with no concrete information

as to the differences in experiences of different ethnic groups. In particular, this is an affront to the

memory of the genocide and the legacy of it which still affects the Nama and Herero people who were

targeted by the German colonial army. There is also an explicit linking between the early resistance and

Swapo, with Sam Nujoma iconised throughout the ‘Colonial Repression’ gallery and its closure with

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the ‘Formation of SWAPO 1960’. The notion that liberation was won ‘through the barrel the gun’ in

the master narrative is repeated in the museum with the exaggeration and glorification of Swapo military

actions. Ordinary, human stories of struggle and resistance are silenced in favour of the grandeur of

armed war. Particularly, the experiences of women during the struggle are unaddressed in both the

master narrative and the museum, as the mode of militarism through which this history was written is

explicitly masculine and patriarchal. More generally, women are misrepresented, essentialised and

invisibalised in the museum. This is not a unique phenomenon by any means. The misunderstanding

and misconstruing of women’s varied roles in conflict has been experienced in the aftermath of almost

every conflict that has ever occurred. The representation of women and their contributions to the

liberation movement, within and outside of Swapo, at the Independence Memorial Museum is

extremely problematic, women are both under represented and misrepresented, visible and invisible at

the same time. The inclusion of women in the museum uncritically presents women as undifferentiated

actors in the struggle relying exclusively on visual representation, uses them as tokens in an effort to

the achievement of gender equality, present them as victims whose honour Swapo defended, and

pigeonholes women into traditional gender roles. There is no engagement with women as historical

actors in their own right, their experiences or contributions to liberation. Finally, in terms of expunging

the record, within the museum there is simply no reference or testimony to Swapo’s own gross human

rights abuses in exile. While the museum could have presented an opportunity for Swapo to

acknowledge this history and grapple with it in an honest way, the exclusion indicates how now more

than ever Swapo is adhering to and consolidating the master narrative it created to protect and legitimize

itself.

What should be mourned in the Independence Memorial Museum is the loss of the opportunity to

remedy the harms of silence that have been borne by the Namibian people. Ex-detainees, those affected

by the legacy of the genocide, female combatants and the ordinary citizens who experienced South

African occupation, civil war and struggle – one day these memories and narratives will be harder to

access and those who visit the Independence Memorial Museum in future will find no archive or even

hint of them within its walls. The Swapo master narrative, its creation and motivation, offers an

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explanation as to why the Independence Memorial Museum continues these silences into the

independence era. In conclusion, I suggest we sit with the understanding of memory politics offered by

Milan Kundera:

“The struggle of man [sic] against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.''250

250 Milan Kundera, 1996, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (London: Faber and Faber): 4.

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